


As Men to Fear the Dark

by proxydialogue



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Plot, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Harry Hart Lives, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mission Fic, Slash, but slightly more specific violence, dark themes, hint-of-cheese badguy, mostly canon compliant, three musketeers friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 20:04:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3908845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proxydialogue/pseuds/proxydialogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After V-day, the world is a jigsaw in a tumble dryer. Nations across the world have collapsed. Kingsman itself is in shambles. Eggsy, Merlin, and Roxy are working desperately to piece everything back together, while in the shadows, mad and malicious men find footholds in the rubble, using the chaos to their advantage. </p><p>Harry Hart's name appears in the paper for the second time. And Eggsy, trying hard to fill the shoes of his mentor, is finding it impossible to let go of Harry's memory. </p><p>He feels haunted. Quite literally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Vialatt for taking a quick look at this for me, and to Scarletjedi for listening to me bitch about this story for a month even though she hasn't even seen the movie yet. Paragons of beta-hood, the both of you. Parts of this story are un-beta'd. If you find mistakes, please feel free to throw those mistakes, taped to a rock, through my window. Constructive criticism can be likewise delivered.
> 
> This story was supposed to be 4k of get-together fic. Instead it became whatever the hell this monstrosity is. 
> 
> The subtitle of this story is “American Writer Attempts English Dialogue.” I apologize, only a little flippantly, in advance.
> 
> There are three chapters total. I'm posting all of them at once. Patience is not my virtue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Musical prodigy humantrampoline85 has uncovered the theme song for this entire fic! I'm so delighted with it. Have a listen if you like! 
> 
> [Like a River Runs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWpWfL2RlgI), by Bleacher.

 

 

How can you lie so still? All day I watch  
And never a blade of all the green sod moves  
To show where restlessly you toss and turn,  
And fling a desperate arm or draw up knees  
Stiffened and aching from their long disuse;  
I watch all night and not one ghost comes forth  
To take it’s freedom of the midnight hour.  
Oh, have you no rebellion in your bones?  
The very worms must scorn you where you lie.

 _from_ To The Dead in the Graveyard Underneath My Window

-Adelaide Crapsey

 

**_\--February 15th--_ **

 

The aftermath of V-Day is a crushing atmosphere of silence that begins in the throats of cadavers. 

They lie still beneath sheets, or in stacked piles of body bags, thrown into hastily dug desert graves, as they wait to be named. The war zones were hit the hardest. Places where guns and grenades are in better supply than bread and bandages; The Middle East. South America. North Africa. Every war in the world stops on February 15th while commanders and countries put down their arms to count their dead. The friendly fire deaths are immense. Military safe-zones and bases smolder and smoke, blown flat into blood-soaked microcosms of No-Mans-Land.

No treatise or official cease-fires are called. None are needed. There were nineteen minutes of insanity and violence on February 14th, and the simple truth is that by the next day, no one has the stomach for war anymore.

In civilian areas, medical tents are erected like small, ghost cities. Hospitals are completely over run and spill out into schools and town halls and the floors of shopping malls. Every medical professional still capable of walking straps on gloves and aprons, or plastic baggies when supplies run low, and begins the long task of patching up society.

In England, lists are read and updated by public officials every hour and aired by every news station and radio broadcast. Morning. Noon. Night.

# 

Eggsy, Merlin, and Roxy watch the news together in Merlin’s flat, the only place they can be sure of total privacy. They sit in quiet, sleep-deprived hunches on Merlin’s couch, shoulder to shoulder, weary eyes fixed on the screen. Pillows and blankets are strewn about the room. Discarded cups of tea cover the coffee table.

"It’s strange, but I don’t feel any bigger," Merlin mumbles. He’s slumping slowly sideways into Roxy, or else Roxy is slumping sideways into him, it’s impossible to tell. Eggsy and Roxy look at him, puzzled. Merlin shrugs. "I’m a mass murderer now, technically. I just thought the feeling would be..." he makes a boneless, meandering hand gesture, "...bigger."

Eggsy lifts the dead weight of his arm over Roxy and pokes him in the shoulder.

"We," he says. "We is mass murderers, bruv. Was my idea to set them chips off."

Merlin turns his head to look at Eggsy.

"I’m making you Galahad," he says softly after a long pause. "There won’t be any tests."

Eggsy swallows down the sudden knot in his throat and nods. He’ll say thank you later, when he can bear to face the implications.

They fall back into their exhausted silence, eyes on the television. For today there is nothing they can do but listen for names they know, and wait.  

One by one, the benefactors and department heads of Kingsman call.

Or they don’t.

Merlin makes a written list of the second category. When it’s complete, they memorize it together. Then they burn it and wash the ashes down the sink.

 

 

**_\--February 16th--_ **

 

In England, at least, most of the civilian dead have been accounted for, and they’re not as staggering as Eggsy feared. The names of soldiers abroad will take more time while the military hierarchy dominos itself back into place and while friendly nations finish their own body counts. The numbers Eggsy hears coming out of the United States and Mexico are terrifying.

Some businesses reopen. Supermarkets and restaurants open their doors and either give food away or attempt to resume business as usual.

Merlin pulls together the skeleton of an inquiry committee out of the people they manage to prove were uninvolved with Arthur’s schemes. One or two of the benefactors are cleared and briefed. A few others show up headless. A couple more show up stabbed or mutilated, now proven innocent at least, but still dead.

Merlin begins another list of names. At the top of the sheet Eggsy sees him scribble " _killed in the line of duty."_

 

 

**_\--February 17th--_ **

 

As the inquiry committee grows and gains momentum, the gears of Kingsman start to turn again. Reports trickle in from other locations. More living are found. More dead.

The first traitor with a heartbeat turns up. He’s brought to the mansion, and while Merlin and Eggsy are arguing about whether or not there should be a tribunal before they chuck him in a dark hole he can never crawl out of, Roxy shoots him in the head.

"We don’t have the resources to be keeping prisoners," she says.

Merlin looks at her with an expression halfway between shock and pride.

"You’re right," he says.

A third list is started, in Roxy’s hand. She sits down at Merlin’s desk while Merlin stands behind the chair looking unhappy and ill.

_"Terminated."_

"We’ll make up something nice to tell their families," Roxy says. She pats Merlin’s shaking hand kindly.

#

Eggsy goes to Harry’s house that evening and stands in the ringing silence. There are words bottled up in the bottom of his lungs, but he can’t bring himself to choke them up. A million questions and apologies. Ten thousand confessions and accusations.

He goes into Harry’s study and sits down behind the desk, looking around, reading every headline tacked to the wall. He sits for an hour, doing nothing, thinking of nothing but Harry. The laptop is still there, lying face down against the wood. Eggsy doesn’t touch it.

Eventually, Merlin’s voice appears in Eggsy’s ear through the glasses they wear twenty-four seven.

"Eggsy," he says gently. "We need you to come back in for a few hours."

Eggsy stands up, fingertips brushing the surface of the desk.

"I miss him," he says.

"I know, lad," Merlin says. "So do I."

 

 

**_\--February 18th--_ **

 

Merlin disappears for twenty hours. He tells no one where he’s going, or why he’s going.

He does call Eggsy’s cell, at four-fifteen in the afternoon, and then inexplicably hangs up when Eggsy answers.

When he comes back his face is drawn and pale. He won’t say where he’s been.

 

 

 

**_\--February 19th--_ **

 

Harry Hart’s name appears in the paper for the second time. He never married.

 

 

**_\--February 21--_ **

 

The commercial airports reopen and global trade resumes at a three-legged crawl.  

Eggsy is officially inducted as a Kingsman agent, codename: Galahad. There’s no ceremony. Kingsman has always been an agency more concerned with practical application than pomp and circumstance.  Merlin assembles the agents, makes the announcement, and shakes Eggsy’s hand. Eggsy thanks him quietly and keeps it together for the rest of the meeting.

As soon as the feeds are cut and the other agents flicker to empty air, Eggsy’s knees hit the floor and he’s shaking, sobbing, one hand clutching the arm of Galahad’s chair. The sounds come up from the bottom of his stomach. They’re broken and ugly, punching the air from his lungs.

Harry’s dead. It’s been days and Harry is still dead. His house is empty, his chair is empty, and Eggsy has never felt this awful before.  

Roxy sits down next to him on the floor and pulls him into her arms. Merlin kneels on his other side and puts a hand on Eggsy’s shoulder.

"Oh, Eggsy," he mumbles under his breath. "I’m sorry."

Eggsy holds on to Roxy and cries because the man he loves is dead.

If either Roxy or Merlin are surprised to learn what Eggsy felt for Harry— _still feels, fuck that dickhead and his carelessness—_ they don’t show it. They stay with him on the floor until he can breathe again, and then take him out for Chinese.

 

 

**_\--February 24--_ **

 

Eggsy gets a house. It’s in a nice part of town, and within walking distance of the shop; painted daisy yellow. He stands on his front steps for a long time, looking at the mailbox with his name on it, and can’t believe how much his life has turned around in the past few months. Drugs and theft, Saturday nights in the back of a police car, they all feel like things that all happened to some other stupid, kid.  

He goes to get his mum and Daisy. In Harry’s honor, he wipes the floor with Dean and his goons. He does feel a little bad about all the property damage done in the process, but if his new life is going to work out, Eggsy needs to draw the line right away. He needs Dean to know that there will be consequences if he comes after Eggsy’s family. That, when the divorce papers arrive, Dean’s job is to sign them immediately and mail them back without a fucking word.

"It’s that or I sees to it you go to prison, and me mum gets an easy annulment. Six a’one to me, dickhead," Eggsy says to Dean’s half-conscious lump on the floor.

Eggsy doesn’t have to drug the barkeep the way Harry did, because he’s known that sod almost all his life.

"You and your mum go on, Eggsy," Lloyd says. "I’ll call when you’ve gone and the coppers can mop this lot up."

"Thanks," Eggsy says. He steps over Dean and holds his arm out for his mom to take, a free, easy smile bursting out of his face. "C’mon, mum," he says.

She takes his arm, eyes still wide with shock.

They go pack their things and pick up Daisy from daycare. Then they go home.

 

 

**_\--February 28th--_ **

 

Lamorak and Kay, confirmed by intel to be alive, are officially classified as rogue. They never answer their summons to UK HQ and vanish as quickly as they are found, submerging into the hazy underbelly of black markets and countries with no trade sanctions.

"We should send someone after them," Roxy says.

"I could go," Eggsy offers. Now that the worst of the rebuilding process is over, and they have time to do things like eat and sleep again, he’s feeling antsy.

"I have someone on it," Merlin answer cryptically. He’s leaning on his desk, cup of tea in his hand, frowning at his monitor. "I’m hearing the strangest things coming out Romania," he mutters, reading.

"Like what?" Eggsy asks.

"Two teenagers went missing just outside of Cluj a few days ago," says Merlin. "They turned up this morning on a bike trail in the Hoia forest. They’re eyes had been removed and they’d been... hypodermically bled to the point of acute anemia."

"...That’s fucked," says Eggsy. "Hope they catch the pyscho that did it."

"Unfortunately, given the current state of Romania’s government, I’d say that’s unlikely," Merlin says. He sighs and leans back. "Anyway, now that things are settling down, I think it’s high time you two had a few days off." He spins in his chair and smiles up at them. "Good job, saving the world."

"When’s your day off then?" Eggsy asks pointedly.

"Sometime next year, I imagine," Merlin answers. When Eggsy makes a face he says, "Believe me, I’m cashing in all my vacation days the moment a new Arthur is elected. But that moment is still months away. Until then, I’ll be alright. Now go. Both of you. You’re underfoot."

"Yes, Merlin," says Roxy.

"Eat some fuckin’ vegetables," Eggsy says over his shoulder as Roxy pulls him towards the door. "And get some _fucking sleep._ " 

Roxy shuts the door behind them and shakes her head, smiling.  

"What?" Eggsy asks. She shrugs.

"I don’t know," she says. "I guess it’s just, when we met, I never expected you to turn out to be the knight that’s also everybody’s mother."

"Oh, shove it," Eggsy tells her. "Wanna go binge-watch Miss Marple wit me and Daise? She loves that show. Weird kid. I blame me mum."

Roxy laughs.

"Yeah, okay."

 

 

**_\--May 1--_ **

 

A bomb goes off in Palestine.

One by one, the wars begin again.

 

 

**_\--May 6--_ **

 

Eggsy’s lying awake in his bed, wrapped up in blankets and shadows. His heart is racing and his breath is pumping in ragged gasps because he’s trying and trying but for some reason he _can’t remember the sound of Harry’s voice._

He jumps out of bed and paces for a few minutes, face in his hands. Daisy’s baby monitor hums from the other side of the room and the little red light watches him.

He can’t get the timbre right. The oak and polish accent that matched Harry’s eyes.

He remembers those, at least.

"Harry," he mumbles. "Harry. Harry," like saying his name will bring it back. He just hears the buzzing background of a dead radio station.

Eggsy pulls on a pair of jeans and sneakers and walks to Harry’s place in the dead of night. He picks the lock, lets himself in, and locks the door behind him again. Eggsy sucks a deep breath through his nose. He kicks his shoes off by the door and walks barefoot through the hall and into the bathroom.

Mr. Pickle, at least, isn’t judging him.

Eggsy sits down on the floor and wraps his arms around his knees.

 _"Can’t you see that everything I’ve done has been about trying to repay him?"_ Harry’s voice, like a bell in his mind. Like a screw twisting into his ribs. Eggsy drops his head to his knees in relief.

Eggsy wraps himself in the sensations and fresh, painful memories of the last time he saw Harry. He makes himself small so that the ghosts have room to move. He watches them over and over again until they’re burned in the back of his eyelids.

Harry, severe and disappointed against the sink. And behind that, hard determination and calculations, trying to figure out the ways he can correct Eggsy’s fuck up, because he think’s that what he owes Eggsy. He thinks it what he owes Eggsy father.

 _You was so wrong ‘bout some things,_ Eggsy thinks. _So wrong._

_"I’m sorry, Harry."_

_"You should be. Now, you just stay right there. I’ll sort this mess out when I get back."_

Even in the midst of the marrow deep ache in his chest, Eggsy feels himself slipping, tipping sideways onto the bathroom rug. He falls asleep with the echoes of Harry's bitter disappointment still ringing in his ears.

 

 

**_\--May 9--_ **

 

Lamorak’s name is added to the list of _Terminated._  Merlin still has the pen in his hand when Eggsy walks through the door. He looks exhausted, a little thinner than a month ago, troubled. He doesn’t even give Eggsy shit for entering without knocking.

Eggsy wonders if Merlin was as close with Lamorak as he was with Harry.

"How many do we think is out there?" Eggsy asks, moving to stand behind Merlin. He leans against Merlin’s desk and reads through the other twenty names.

"Difficult to say," answers Merlin, tiredly. "At most, we’ve calculated that the implants had a failure rate of about two percent. But, how many people may have gotten around them in other ways...we don’t know. Within Kingsman itself, and that’s our first priority, the number seems minimal."

"That’s good news, innit," Eggsy says without feeling. He puts the list back down on the desk, eyes wandering over to other list, _Killed in the line of duty._

It grew longer every day.

 

 

**_\--May 11--_ **

 

Merlin calls Eggsy and Roxy to his office.

"Under normal circumstances this would be a much longer process," he tells them. "The breaking in of a new knight is a lengthy endeavor. It takes months. Usually new knights will be paired with the knight who proposed them for a time. It gives you field experience, allows bonds to form..." Merlin looks at Eggsy and his words trail off.

Eggsy swallows and looks down, viciously stamping down the blood-and-broken-glass memory of V-Day that tries to crawl its way up his throat.

Merlin hands each of them a file.

"But we don’t have time for green knights this year," he says. "So I need the both of you to rise into your full positions almost immediately, premature though it may be. Governments are toppling around the world. Civilized nations and third world countries alike are in bloody chaos. These files contain the history on your roles. Learn from them when you can. The rest you’ll have to pick up along the way, I’m afraid. It’s time the Kingsman knights took an active role in current events again. "

Eggsy takes the folder. It’s a rich, deep red color, two inches thick and bound with a gold silk cord.

"I’ll see you in the morning," Merlin says. Then, as Eggsy and Roxy are leaving, adds: "If either of you need to...to talk, or if you need anything else, you can call me at home."

Eggsy sees a flicker of something in Merlin’s eyes that he recognizes. A reflection of the same gaping chasm he feels beneath his own feet.

"You too," says Roxy on behalf of both of them.

#

Eggsy learns this from the file:

Galahad’s chair is fucking haunted.

It’s a notoriously bloody position in the Kingsman legacies. No Kingsman dies in his sleep (with a few, notable exceptions,) but where others are ventilated by armor piercing rounds, or splattered like a spaghetti stain across a wall, Galahad’s death is like a natural disaster. Furious. Red. Surrounded by casualties.

There were six Galahad’s before Harry. They all died in a bloodbath. Mathematically it’s not impossible for anomalous pattern to run that long, but Eggsy thinks about Harry and can’t stop the cold shudder that runs through him.

Realistically, he thinks it’s got more to do with the kind of men who end up with Galahad’s name. They’re reckless, like Eggsy. Fearless, like Harry. They always seem to have a long history of "nothing to lose."

He can all but feel the weight of their ghosts when he puts the file down.

He'll be one of them someday.

Merlin calls at eleven thirty.

"I just wanted to see how you were doing," he says.

"Dunno, bruv," answers Eggys honestly. "Not sure how to tell anymore. You?"

"Much the same."

They sit on opposite sides of the phone call for a few minutes in companionable silence.

"How’s Rox?" Eggsy asks, knowing Merlin would have called her first.

"She’s tired," Merlin answers. "But, I suspect, holding up better than we are."

"Ha. She’s a superhero, she is."

"Yes."

Another few moments of quiet. Eggsy hears the sound of a kettle beginning to boil on Merlin’s end. He reaches out and plays with the fraying ends of the rope that holds Galahad’s file closed. Runs his fingertips over the embossed name.

"Eggsy?" Merlin says. 

"Hmm?"

"It won’t always be like this. I know it feels hideous now but...just hang in there, lad."

"You too, Merlin."

They hang up.

 

 

**_\--May 15--_ **

 

Eggsy dreams about the church.

He wakes up screaming himself hoarse and thrashing, vowing to slaughter a man that--he recalls as the soft shapes of his bedroom come into focus around him--he’s killed already.

Mum is banging on his door.

"Eggsy! Eggsy, open the bloody door! Are you okay?" 

Eggsy takes a deep breath and tries to orient himself. He rolls out of bed and unlocks the door, opening it, trying to look calm even though his blood is still pounding so hard he can feel it in his teeth.

"Yeah, Mum. Sorry ‘bout that. Just a nightmare."

 "Just a nightmare?" she gasps, looking him up and down. She has Daisy in her arms. Daise is crying, red-faced and terrified.

"Aww, shit, Daise I’m sorry, babe." Eggsy holds out his arms and Mum hands her over. Eggsy holds her against his chest and bounces, following Mum into the their kitchen. Daisy's cries crawl under his heartstrings and pull them up like carpet. "Shhh," he says. "Shh, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean ta scare ya."

It takes twenty minutes to calm her down. Another thirty to get her back to sleep. Afterwards, Mum stands in the dim light of the hallway night-light and looks at Eggsy, a worried frown etched in her features.

"Your father used to have nightmares like that," she says softly. "After his first tour."

Eggsy tries to tell her a good lie. Something reassuring. She walks him to work at the tailor shop most days, if he really put his stomach into it he could make it believable.

He brushes a length of hair out of her face and gives her a hug.

"Y’should get back t’bed, mum," he says instead. "Get some rest."

 

 

**_\--May 16--_ **

 

Harry’s house at night is full of sounds. There’s a grandfather clock in the living room that chimes on every hour. A pendulum clock in the kitchen that ticks so loud it can be heard from the office. The heat makes a sound like an ocean tide when it turns on (with the days turning warmer, and no one to keep warm on a regular basis anyway Eggsy hunts down the thermostat and turns it down.) A window that rattles in the wind.

Then there’s the other sounds. The ones that only Eggsy will ever hear. The ones he makes up.

The shuffle of slippers on carpet. Creak of soft footsteps coming down the stairs. The clink of spoons and teacups in the kitchen. A smooth voice, humming along to string symphonies that Eggsy doesn’t know the names of.

Those sounds are the reason he comes here in the middle of the night and falls asleep in Harry’s old armchair, curled up like some stupid, heartbroken kid waiting for someone to come find him and take him home.  

At least here it doesn’t matter how loudly he screams himself awake.

He knows he’s being childish. Know’s he’s being stupid, clinging to the memory of a man more than twenty years his senior, who can’t come back now and save Eggsy no matter how much he may have wanted too.

In the long run, Eggsy knows he’s only hurting himself by refusing to let go. But, for now at least, he prefers to keep his fantasies. He’d rather live half his life behind his eyelids then go back to the bottomless drop he’d been living before he met Harry.

Eggsy breathes deep and drops off; dreams horrible dreams. Wakes up aching and cramped and shivering. He doesn’t open his eyes.

_Harry breathes a soft sigh from the doorway. His suit shifts and rustles as he comes closer, brushes the fringe of hair away from Eggsy’s forehead._

_"You did very well," Harry whispers. "And I’m very proud of you."_

Eggsy smiles, tears breaching the edge of his composure. Then he drops peacefully back into his nightmares.

 

 

**_\--May 17--_ **

 

That old grandfather clock clanging out four a.m. pulls Eggsy out of the murky waters of his dreams. Pins and needles are eating up half his body.

He slides out of the armchair and limps up the stairs.

The stinging crusts of riverbeds are hollowed in his cheeks. He uses the bathroom in the master bedroom to rinse his face.

Then he crawls into the bed, breathes in the last vestiges of Harry’s presence.

He’s all out of pride. Too tired for shame.

He doesn’t sleep great.

But he sleeps alright.

 

 

**_\--May 19--_ **

 

More weird shit is reported out of Romania.

Fires have been breaking out in churches across the country, starting in the east and working their way west. There’s no pattern to the denomination of the churches. As far as Merlin can make out, it’s every church easily accessible off the major highways.

It gets so bad that people start abandoning the churches, leaving them void and empty, removing the iconography, carving whole paintings off the walls and storing them in barns and basements, when they think they might be next.

The first whispers of an urban legend begin. Merlin reads the news reports and rolls his eyes.

"The devil indeed," he scoffs. "One, little close call with an apocalypse and people lose all sense of reason." He looks sideways when Eggsy laughs. "Still," he admits, "best to keep tabs on our Romanian arsonist. It may be that he has bigger plans." He assigns some poor flunky in Research to monitor all the major Romanian news outlets.

He hands Eggsy the briefing packet for his own assignment.

Later, inside, among papers and photographs, Eggsy finds the key to Harry’s house.

 

 

**_\--May 22--_ **

 

Instead of wasting time, Eggsy stops pretending he’s okay, ceases all illusions of moving on and coping like a reasonable adult, and moves into Harry’s house.

It’s about more than Eggsy big, pathetic, broken heart.

Harry was the first person to ever believe in Eggsy, and the last person to give up on him. (As far as Eggsy knows, Harry never gave up on him, even after Eggsy had flunked out of Kingsman and stolen another car...) And it’s about how Eggsy has been building up his own towers of courage for years, erecting walls under skin and finding basements in his mind where he can feel safe. But in Harry’s presence, at Harry’s place, the safety was there already, waiting for him when he arrived.

And it’s for the best, if he does this. He can’t keep showing up at his mum’s house bloody and banged up, scaring the hell out of her and Daise. Can't keep ripping them out of bed with his nightmares every night.

But he has to explain it to his mom somehow, so when she asks:

"There's someone in your life, isn’t there?"

He says quietly,

"Yeah, mum." And tries not to fall apart when her face lights up with a smile.

 

 

**_\--June 1--_ **

 

The first cracks of Eggsy’s inevitable undoing are small.

 

 

**_\--June 7--_ **

 

He rises in the morning and smells Harry’s aftershave in the hall. It’s not the imagined, spectre of a sent anymore. He feels like he’s standing in a room freshly vacated. Like Harry only just walked out, seconds before.

 

 

**_\--June 14--_ **

 

He goes to bed, and in the middle of the night hears floorboards creaking in ways they never did before. He hears what sounds like careful footsteps, moving about the house with Harry’s gentle ease.

He _hears_ them. They come on their own. He doesn’t imagine them to life.

 

 

**_\--June 30--_ **

 

He feels the ghostly brushes of Harry’s hands on his face. Harry’s hands on his back when he can’t take it anymore and breaks down into tears. Harry’s hands lifting him back up on his feet, Harry’s voice at his shoulder reminding Eggsy that there’s still work to be done.

Still so much work to be done.

 

 

**_\--July 29--_ **

 

Perhaps it’s the pressure of the job, more likely it’s the detached, unreal feeling of living with a ghost his mind has invented, but Eggsy goes out on a recon mission and somehow forgets that he can’t fly.

He’s running across a roof, gunfire like hail behind him, and when he runs out of rooftop he simply leaps, jumps right off a twelve story building without even looking first.

Merlin’s voice cracks through his ear in harsh panic, "EGGSY!" forgetting his role, forgetting codenames.

A smaller building, three floors shorter and twenty feet down, saves his life. Eggsy hits the fire-escape and rolls, tumbling down a flight of metal stairs before he’s back on his feet, jumping again. He swings his way down by the railings of the fire-escape, until his feet find pavement.

 _"Christ,_ Galahad," Merlin gasps in his ear when Eggsy hits the ground. "What the bloody _fuck."_

"Sorry, Merlin," Eggsy mumbles. But he doesn’t really mean it.

Bullets falling from the roof. Eggsy starts running again.

His reservations are tumbling, he can feel them peeling away like old paint. And underneath he finds he’s not that piss-scared, delinquent little fuck-up anymore. He’s someone else entirely.

He’s Galahad. And he’s fearless.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idontknowbutitsbjutifl, artistic savant, has painted some AMAZING illustrations for this fic. Scenes from this chapter are below: 
> 
> ["I miss him." & "Fearless."](http://idontknowbutitsbjutifl.tumblr.com/post/124490138400/sooner-or-later-im-gonna-draw-the-whole-thing)


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

ROSENCRANTZ:  They had it in for us, didn’t they? Right from the beginning.  
Who’d have thought that we were so important?

GUILDENSTERN: But why? Was it all for this? Who are we that so much should  
converge on our little deaths? ( _In anguish to the PLAYER:)_ Who are _we?  
_

PLAYER: You are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That’s enough.

 _from_ Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

-Tom Stoppard

 

Eggsy wakes up to his cell phone buzzing on the nightstand and JB snorting up at him from beside the bed. He grabs the phone and stuffs it under the pillow he’s not using (Harry’s bed has enough pillows for three people at least) to muffle the sound. He closes his eyes again and rolls away from it, taking a deep breath, searching the air for the lingering scent of Harry’s aftershave.

It isn’t there today.

Perhaps tomorrow.

#

Merlin is waiting for him in the dining room.

"Galahad," he says, "late as usual." He’s sitting in Arthur’s chair, bent over a mess of papers and scribbling. That’s how Merlin always looks these days. Nose plastered to schematics, requisition forms, and mission briefs. Eyes red-rimmed and shoulders simmering with tension. Eggsy thinks if they don’t elect a new Arthur soon, Merlin is going to have a nervous breakdown.

Eggsy slides into Galahad’s chair and thumps a jug down on the corner of Merlin’s landscape of papers.

Merlin stops writing and looks up, back straightening slowly out of the perpetual mountain of his posture.

"What--?" he asks.

"Orange juice," Eggsy tells him. "So’s you don’t die of scurvy."

Merlin looks from the jug to Eggsy’s face and back to the jug. He puts his pen down and sits the rest of the way back in the chair, a small smile clawing up through his exhaustion. He gets up and brings two whisky tumblers over from the sideboard, opening the jug and filling each of the glasses.

"Cheers," he says to Eggsy and drains his glass. Eggsy takes a few healthy gulps of his own. "You continue to confound expectations in the oddest of ways, Eggsy." Merlin says, shaking his head. He meets Eggsy's gaze and says, with sincerity not entirely appropriate to the situation, "Thank you."

"Yeah. Any time, bruv," Eggsy says.

Then, after a moment of digging around through the papers and maps, Merlin produces a folder which he presents to Eggsy.

"Your assignment," he says without preamble, "is to assassinate a Romanian sorcerer."

Eggsy takes the folder, holds it in his hand a moment, and places it gently on the desk as though it contains glass.

"...Fucking pardon?" he asks politely, folding his hands on the desk.

"Dracula, to be more specific," Merlin clarifies. Eggsy looks around the empty room and wonders how best to get a doctor of any kind to come running. "I haven’t lost my mind yet, Eggsy," Merlin goes on, that small smile creeping back onto his face.

"Merlin," says Eggsy. "I know your name is _Merlin,_ but you know there ain’t no such thing as actual sorcerers, yeah?"

"I suppose, going by traditional myth, he would more rightly be considered a vampire," Merlin says with a small quirk of his mouth. He motions for Eggsy to put his glasses on and picks up his tablet.

"Fuck you," says Eggsy, but complies.

A video begins to play in the mirror on the wall. There’s no sound, and the quality is poor, choppy and pixelated like a feed over a poor internet connection, but for all that, none of the video’s message is missed.

The man in the video is wearing a dark sweatshirt with a deep hood so that his face can’t be seen. He and another man, younger, some dumb punk in his late teens or early twenties, Eggsy guesses, stand face to face in the cold stone space of a cellar. A small window, high in the left corner of the screen, lets in a single, dusty shaft of sunlight.

The faceless man pushes down on the kid’s shoulder with a single finger, and the young man falls to his knees as if shoved. The camera moves, shaking as it’s carried closer, and Eggsy sees the puffy red mess of new tattoo (that looks like it was done with ink and a razor in a bathroom mirror) on the young man’s neck. Underneath the smears of blood and new scabs, he can just make out the shape of a dragon.

With one arm, the faceless man reaches up, exposing his bare hand to the sunlight. The skin smolders, smokes, and catches fire.

Then the faceless man takes his burning hand and grabs the young man’s face, holding him down, keeping him still as if by no effort at all. Even with no sound, Eggsy can see the young man screaming. Five or six agonizing seconds go by. The young man’s hands scrabble and twist useless in the air. Just when Eggsy thinks he can’t bear to watch anymore, the faceless man lets go. A five-fingered burn, peeling and mangled, is left behind.

The faceless man holds out his other hand. A heavy gold signet ring glints in the firelight on his finger.  

The young man sways forward, parts the burned flesh of his lips, and kisses the ring.

The right hand, still burning, is just bright enough to illuminate the bottom half of the face behind the black hood. Eggsy sees a wide, white smile. With teeth just this side of too long, canines just this side of too sharp.

The video ends.

Eggsy heart is hammering and his skin is cold.

"Holy shit," he says.

Merlin looks at Eggsy expectantly.

"Fuck you," Eggsy says again. "I ain’t hammerin’ no stake through some psycho’s ribcage, Merlin."

Merlin smiles without humor.

"You’re right to be skeptical," he says. "We suspect he’s a skilled illusionist." Eggsy lets out a _wooph_ of relief and slumps lower in the chair. "This isn’t the only video, nor the most spectacular. I’ve loaded the others onto a flash drive, it’s in your briefing packet, you can watch them at home while you pack. I would advise you to refrain from eating while you do so."

"Almost had me thinkin’ monster’s was real," Eggsy mutters. "You see it in the movies all the time, people need’n the right security clearance to know ‘bout the skin changers pretendin’ to be the royal family."

"Forgive the hard sell," Merlin says with a real grin. "We have to make our own amusement these days. But," the smile fades and he looks more serious, "don’t mistake me, monsters _are_ real, and this man is one of them. He’s killed two children and mutilated the corpses, the details are in the packet I’d rather not repeat them. You already know about the brother and sister he blinded and bled nearly dry. There have been other similar, incidents scattered throughout Romania since then. Five or six teenagers, who disappeared last month, are still missing...all connected to our would be Dracula."

"Happy to put a bullet through his face," Eggsy says. "I _can_ just shoot him, right?"

"Yes," says Merlin dryly. "But there’s a bit more." Merlin prods his tablet and photographs appear in the mirror. They look like stills out of the old horror movies Eggsy used to watch when he was little and his mum would stay out late. Wooded clearings lit with candles. Men on their knees, painting red symbols on their chests and faces.

"Is that—?"

"The blood taken from the siblings? It’s likely," Merlin says darkly. "Dracula has acolytes. A disturbing number of them. With the Romanian government as fractured as it is, there’s been little to deter the accumulation. They grow more numerous every day."

" _Why?_ " Eggsy asks. "What would make anyone want ta follow a demented, serial-killing magician ‘round the country?"

"I don’t know," says Merlin. "Intelligence out of Romania is still murky and sporadic. It may be that we can find out when we get there, but that’s not our primary objective. What we need is to stop this man," Merlin nods up at the still of the video, shadow figure with a burning hand, "from telling his stories."

"What’re his stories doin?" Eggsy asks. "I thought _he_ was the one killin’ people."

"The videos are online," Merlin answers. "Along with transcripts of his teachings."

"There are dickheads emulating him in other countries," Eggsy says. It’s not a guess. Merlin nods. "S’the Americans isn’t it?" As if he has to ask.

"Among others," says Merlin. "We leave in four hours."

"We?" asks Eggsy.

"I’m going with you," says Merlin. He pours more orange juice into his glass. "This will be dangerous. They’re a violent cult, armed with group psychosis, belief, and machine guns. If you need a quick extraction...I want to be there."

"Sure," says Eggsy. He drinks the rest of his orange juice and wonders what Merlin isn’t telling him.

#

Mum still doesn’t really know what he does, but he can tell she’s long past believing that Eggsy is a tailor. Nonetheless, she agrees to take JB for him when he has to travel "for business" and in return he babysits Daisy whenever he can, and takes them all out to nice dinners and movies and family day trips on the weekends.

It’s a little bit like bribing her into not asking too many questions. But even if there was a way to get her cleared to know about Kingsman, _"Mum, I’m an assassin,"_ is just not a way Eggsy can bring himself to break his mum’s heart.

"When will you be back?" She asks, shoving a Tupperware full of Alfredo into his hands. She cooks for him constantly now, always insisting he take some home with him.

"Couple'a days," he says. "Won't be gone long."

"Alright. You'll be careful? Just that traveling is dangerous these days and all..."

"Yeah, mum. I'll be careful."

"Okay." She gives him a hug and a peck on the cheek, and then picks up Daisy and moves into the kitchen as Eggsy leaves, pretending that she isn’t going to watch every step he takes walking away down the street. He walks out the door, doing her the favor of pretending he doesn’t know she’s watching.

#

The briefing packet is next to the saltshaker on the kitchen table.

When Eggsy sees this, he feels his limbs go loose on instinct and his heart begin pound. He pulls his gun out of his harness and steps carefully from the hall into the dining room. The door had been locked when he arrived, and there was no sign that someone had forced their way in, no scratches on the brass around the keyhole other than the ones hemade himself months ago; but Eggsy knows that when he left, the packet was beside the pepper. He knows it in the same way he knows exactly how many bullets are in his gun, and how many knives are in the house. He knows it like he knows his name and his age, and the names of all the faces in photographs taken of him from before his life came rely on the three inches of difference between where he leaves a thing and where he finds it later.

Eggsy pads silently through the house, breathing shallow and moving slow.

He finds no one but the familiar ghosts. Motionless butterflies pinned up in the bathroom and the always faint, fading signs of Harry’s presence from months ago. Eggsy breathes a sigh of relief and takes his glasses out of his breast pocket.

"Merlin?" Eggsy says, heading back to the dining room.

"Yes, Galahad?" comes Merlin’s voice after a pause.

"Someone’s been in Harry’s house. They been through my briefing packet."

"What?" snaps Merlin. "Did they take anything?"

Eggsy picks up the folder, pulls out the envelope with the flash drive. The drive is still there, but running his finger along the edge of the envelope, he feels a telltale dampness from where someone resealed it.

"No," says Eggsy. "They was a professional though. I couldn’t find how they got in, and they put everything back the way they found it. Well, almost." He drops the folder back on the table. It hits the wood with a flap and a _whuff_ of air.

Polished ochre and brown eyes, Eggsy catches the barest scent of aftershave and feels something unpleasant turn over in his stomach and smash. He picks the folder back up with trembling fingers and holds it just under his nose.

_Harry._

The same scent that greets him in the upstairs hallway on some mornings. The same that accompanies oddly creaking steps and floorboards in the middle of the night. Eggsy drifts, a dull, persistent ringing in his head, back towards the front door. He smells it there too. Stronger. How he didn’t notice it first walking in...

In the mornings he can pass this off as a sleepy, heartbroken mind clinging to the last tendrils of his desperate dreams. Now?

He realizes that Merlin is trying to talk to him.

"Eggsy? Are you listening?"

_I’m losing my mind. I’m actually losing it._

"Sorry," he says, trying to talk around the numb panic in his mouth.

"I was saying that we should push forward with the mission. All the truly sensitive information on the flash drive is encrypted. Only a kingsman agent can access it. Unless you have reason to believe the mission has been compromised otherwise?"

 _Not the mission,_ Eggsy thinks. _But me. I’m compromised._

"Nah," he says. "We’ll go ahead." He’s starting to think that no one was in the house at all. It’s still just the same old stupid hopes, playing tricks on him. But getting worse. Making him misplace things and forget important details.  

"Alright. I’ll see you in a few hours," says Merlin. He sounds strange. Clipped and tense, like he’s angry at someone that Eggsy can’t see.

_Harry’s dead._

"See ya, Merlin." Eggsy takes the glass off.

_Harry’s dead and it won’t do no good follow’n after him._

But it feels like he doesn’t have a choice. Every step he takes, up the stairs to the bedroom, throwing clothes and weapons and supplies into a pack, feels like one already laid before his feet. Like every decision, every fuck-up, no matter what alternatives he’d invented, would still have lead him here.

The next chapter in a long history that’s already been written.

#

Eggsy jumps out the back of the plane into the blind dark and falls. The sky is overcast, so that no one will catch the glimpse of his silhouette against the moon, and the air clings chilly with the first winds of autumn. Below, Eggsy can see the outline of low stone walls and the fir trees of the Maramureș region.

Merlin mumbles lower and lower numbers, as Eggsy’s altitude plummets.

A small village, tiny dirt roads and rotting wooden fences, is outlined in green by the schematics that flicker across the display of Eggy’s helmet when he looks over the shadowed bumps below. Somewhere in there is a psychopath, holed up in a picturesque farmers cottage. He has innocent blood on his hands, and more innocent blood kept in temperature controlled vials and hermetically sealed plastic packets.

Eggsy waits until the last possible second, (until Merlin’s voice in his ear is starting to sound strained) and pulls the cord.

He jerks, floats (ignores the rolling cadence of Merlin scolding him for being so reckless all the time), and lands with thump and a muddy squelch. Eggsy unstraps the chute and rolls it into a bundle, buckling it closed by feel in the dark. He hoists it over his shoulder beside his pack and rifle, until he can find somewhere to hide it discreetly, then pulls the helmet off his head and tucks it under his shoulder, slipping on his glasses.

Keeping low to the ground, Eggsy moves through the wilting heather and grass of the field toward the trees and hedges marking a division. To his right the field ends in a dense looking forest, old spruce and brown, tired pines combatting for space. Ahead of him lies the village and a dirt road weaving through widely spaced maples. To his left another field rises in the gradual slope of a hill.

Somewhere in the darkness, a cow moos.

"I think the livestock spotted me," Eggsy mutters. He picks up his pace, sprinting for the edge of the field.

"Let’s hope they don’t blow your cover," Merlin answers, dryly.

The tall grass gives way to short, trimmed horizontal rows and as the edge of the field grows closer, formless lumps rise out of the ground. They’re haystacks, he realizes, running up to crouch beside one.

"What fucking era am I in?" Eggsy whispers. He digs into the hay and stuffs his parachute into the heart of the pile. Along with it he hides his pack, and jumping suit, so he can come back for them later. He checks his rifle, and climbs over the low stonewall and into the maples between the field and the village.

He moves from tree to tree, careful not to step on fallen branches or brittle sticks. Above him, the moon finds a hole in the cloud cover and shivers down hazy white light. Eggsy sees power lines running along the dirt road and comforts himself with the knowledge that he’s not actually in a nineteenth century monster novel.

"Remember, Galahad" says Merlin firmly, "this is a _covert_ assassination. If you can find Dracula, kill him quietly. If you can’t, get out quickly without making too much noise. His acolytes will be everywhere, so keep your eyes open. Expect him to be guarded."  

Eggsy gives the thumbs up in front of his face where Merlin can see.

"Good luck," says Merlin.

Eggsy creeps forward. Between the last tree and the first house is an open plane of forty or fifty yards where the moonlight falls in ruptured shafts. Eggsy presses up against the trunk and gets ready to sprint.

Something firm and cold bumps into the side of his head. Eggsy jumps and whirls.

A black shape hangs from the lowest branch of the maple tree, swinging heavily back and forth. Eggsy hears Merlin’s hushed _"Jesus,"_ in his ear and feels cold horror twist in his chest.

It’s a middle-aged woman. Mottled blue swelling disfigures her face, her fingers and wrists dangle crooked and broken. A man, presumably her husband, sways beside her. Eggsy swallows. He steps back behind the tree and looks around slowly, surveying the ground he just covered. His glasses glide through temperature readings and little dots that read _deceased_ before they sweep out of his vision.

Like dead lanterns, like broken Christmas lights, the villagers are strung from the trees. Eggsy’s fingers clench around the strap of his rifle and his heart starts to pound.

"There are at least sixty bodies out there," says Merlin hoarsely. "Fucking _hell,_ how did this happen?"

Eggsy would like to know the same thing. The file Merlin gave him said there were six known murders, stretched out over months. A few more people were missing, but with no bodies they could easily have just converted to the cult.

 This is something else entirely. This isn’t scattered homicides and kidnappings. It’s a fucking massacre.

"These people have been dead for a day at least. I should have heard something," Merlin says, half to himself. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. "Galahad, get out of there. Head to the rendezvous point now. Go on foot if that’s what it takes to get out of there unseen, I’m standing by to extract you."

Eggsy doesn’t move. He turns to look back up at the woman.

He wonders if there’s anyone left alive who knows her name? Did she have family elsewhere in Romania?

"Galahad," says Merlin again,  " _head to the rendezvous_. We need backup. This is a completely different operation now; I’m going to call Lancelot and Percival back from America."

"How many more people die if we wait?" Eggsy asks under his breath.

"Going in there alone would be suicide,"  says Merlin.

"Innit our job to prevent shit like this?" Eggsy asks. "Your job to find bastards who get away with murder, and my job to pull the trigger? Well, here we is. My turn."

Merlin is quiet for a long stretch of time. Eggsy’s heart, which is slowing to a steady, determined drum, keeps time in the silence.   

"You remind me so much of Harry sometimes," Merlin says softly at last.

Eggsy takes a slow inhale through his nose and tries not to fall into the hole that opens suddenly in his chest.

"Listen," he whispers to Merlin. "If I get blown into Swiss cheese in there, make sure they stitch me up pretty for the funeral, yeah? For me mum an’ everything."

"I’ll try not to let them confuse your smug face with your smart arse then," says Merlin but he sounds worried.

Eggsy starts in towards the village, flickering through the moonlight as fast as he can and plunging headlong into the shadows of the stout, wooden buildings. He hears a brushing sound in his ear, following by the muffled but urgent muttering of Merlin’s voice, as if Merlin is covering the mic with his hand and speaking to someone else.

Growling really. Eggsy can’t hear what he’s saying, but he sounds pissed and panicked.

There’s no time for Eggsy to worry about it now. He follows the wall of the first house around to the back yard and silently jumps the low wooden fence. He stays well out of sight of all the windows, keeping low and moving deliberately, leading himself around corners with the barrel of his rifle

As he moves between a house and a woodshed, he becomes aware of a strong, acrid smell that makes his nostrils burn. He pauses beside the shed, leaning close to take a whiff.

"What is it?" Merlin asks, returning his attention to Eggsy.

"Petrol," Eggsy breathes in answer, just loud enough for Merlin to hear him. "It’s everywhere."

"They were planning to burn the place down on their way out," Merlin muses.

Eggsy keeps moving forward. Soon, he hears the guttural droning of voices ahead. The petrol smell fades as he moves closer to the center of the village. The cult must have dumped it around the perimeter, rather than throughout the streets. Eggsy files that information away, keeps it ready in the back of his mind.

He knows from the satellite pictures provided by Merlin on the flight over that he’s heading in the direction of the town square. Through the gaps between buildings, he sees the flicker of candlelight.

"They must be in the middle of a ceremony," says Merlin. "See if you can climb onto on a roof and get eyes on Dracula that way."

One street over Eggsy finds a black sedan, sitting like a giant beetle in the dark. He smiles at it and opens the door, covering the sound of the click under a swell in the chanting. Then, ears buzzing, listening carefully for the sound of footsteps or murmuring voices in discord with the sounds from the square, he reaches up under the dash and pulls wires down where he can get to them easily later, stripping the ends with the knife in his belt.

Leaving the door of the sedan open, Eggsy shoulders his rifle and climbs onto the car. He pulls himself up from the hood to the low eaves of a house. The roof is sloped, but not so steep that he has trouble keeping his footing. At the top, he swings the rifle off his shoulder, and peeks down the other side into the square.

Fourteen men kneel in a circle facing each other. Their heads are bowed, so Eggsy can’t see any of their faces. Candles are held in the palm of their hands. They’re just plain, white tea candles, Eggsy sees with surprise. And, rather than black robes, the cultists are dressed in jeans and t-shirts. They look more like a biker gang than a satanic cult.  

 _Shit,_ he thinks, _how do I tell which is Dracula?_

He looks from bowed figure to bowed figure, trying to determine from confidence of posture. He looks for familiar, thin fingers, and a gold signet ring.

"This isn’t right," Merlin says, breaking Eggsy’s train of thought. "Fourteen people didn’t string up sixty bodies in a day. The others must have moved on already."

To where? Eggsy wonders. And, why?

The chanting ends abruptly, and a man rises on the opposite side of the circle. He spreads his palms upward as he stands and lifts his head, a smile spreading across his face.

Eggsy takes a good, long look for Merlin’s recordings. Then he flicks off the safety and pulls the hammer back with two, soft clicks.

He recognizes that smile. Remembers it grinning out at him from every one of the recordings of Dracula’s demonstrations.

Eggsy lines up the sights. He tries very hard not to think of Harry’s face, or flecks of blood like a star map across dark, Kentucky asphalt.

_Deafening quiet. Not even the sound of labored breathing. There is no last gasp of a hero as he dies. Just the horrible, towering silence, reaching out from behind the gentle hum of a laptop speaker and then up, skyward, high as a believer’s faith in Heaven._

Maybe that’s why,Eggsy thinks suddenly. Why he keeps flinging himself across death’s doorstep and leaping like a maniac from rooftops. It’s his way of gasping, of screaming and clawing and doing all the things that Harry never got the chance to do in his last moments. Fighting and revenging and knowing no fear.

 _Being_ Harry. Since Harry isn’t hear to do it anymore. A man who could stand in front of giants without trembling, serene and mild though the ground beneath him shook.

Dracula’s mouth smiles wider. He takes his last living breath, filling his lungs to speak.

Eggsy puts the bullet through his heart. The loud _crack_ of the rifle and the painful ringing in his ears that follows drowning out whatever words Merlin is trying to say.

Dracula staggers slowly his knees, mouth open, issuing forth that silence that is Harry’s legacy. Then he drops onto his face, bleeding out into the dirt.

The thirteen other cultists are scrambling to their feet, looking wildly around.

Eggsy is already sliding down the roof to the hood of the sedan. He jumps down and throws the rifle into the passenger seat, reaching beneath the dash for the wires and striking the copper ends against each other.

The car starts. Eggsy slams the door closed and in the mirror sees three men hurdling around the corner behind him with assault rifles in their hands. Bullets crash through the glass of the rear window. Eggsy ducks his head, throws the car into gear and spins the tires before lurching forward. Bullets whistle past him, punching holes in the windshield. Eggsy rolls the window down as he drives, taking the sharp right on to the main road.

He guns the pedal, kicking up dirt and rocks. When he sees the edge of the village approaching (two nameless silhouettes hanging from a high branch, illuminated by the headlights) Eggsy reaches into his pocket and pulls out a gold lighter.

He flips the lid open and presses a button, then, as he speeds past the final house, drops the lighter out the window.

Eggsy puts the fucking pedal to the floor after that, putting as much distance as he can between him and—

The grenade goes off in an explosive quake and the town goes up in flames as the petrol roars to life.

Eggsy doesn’t bother with his pack and his jumpsuit, there’s no time to go back for them. When the dirt road turns, taking him into the forest and south, Eggsy slows, just a little, and glances in the fractured glass of the rearview mirror.

The sky is red, flames reaching higher than the treetops.

He can see the light for miles as he drives; the fire crawling over the rest of the village, burning everything.  

#

Five miles south of a town called Cavnic is a field surrounded by trees and not much else. Eggsy ditches the sedan on the side of the road and hikes the two miles to the rendezvous.

"Eggsy Unwin, vampire slayer, in the house," he says as he boards the plane. Merlin is sitting behind his computer staring at the monitors.

"Eggsy," he says, but nothing else.

Eggsy moves to stand behind him.

On the middle monitor is a recording of a man in a white, silk suit with a thin, sallow face. He’s smiling, and the expression is a crescent-moon crack of insanity that turns Eggsy’s insides. It’s Dracula. Behind him, barely visible in the poor light, is a tall, weathered monastery that seems more spire than building. The wide, stone doorway behind him is so dark inside that it looks like a hole in the screen.  Dracula is shouting. Gesturing. Raising his hands up towards the sky and bringing them back down again. On the edges of the screen, Eggsy can see figures dressed in black standing in a perimeter holding candles. They look like the men Eggsy saw in the Maramureș village. Not the same exact men, perhaps, but of the same sort.

"What’s the psycho saying?" Eggsy asks.

Merlin points to a program running on the left hand monitor, actively translating the words as Dracula speaks.

"He’s saying this is a peaceful demonstration," Merlin answers, "because the necessary sacrifices have already been made."

"Where is this?"

"Săpânța," answers Merlin. "Roughly thirty miles north of here." His eyes are flickering quickly back and forth between the video and the translations.

The focus of the lens shifts slightly, jostling, as the person taking the video moves. The camera tips upwards briefly before dropping back down and refocusing. Eggsy catches a glimpse of a mostly overcast sky with a waxing moon.

" _When_ was this?" he asks. It couldn’t have been long ago. He can see that same moon right now out the window from where he’s standing. He doesn’t recognize the little widget in the corner of the video, but he assumes it indicates a news broadcast.

"This is a live feed."

Eggsy doesn’t understand for a moment. He looks from Merlin’s unsmiling face to the wide, Cheshire cat grin of the man he gunned down two hours ago and left to burn in a massive inferno.

"What?" says Eggsy. "No. That’s the guy I shot! That asshole’s dead, Merlin, I _shot_ him. I _watched_ him die!"

Dracula spreads his arms wide and begins to take slow, deliberate steps backwards.

"So did I," says Merlin.

Eggsy looks at the running translation program as Dracula’s voice rises in pitch. He sounds hysterical and ecstatic.  

["I speak to the people of broken nations. To _you_ whom our governments have failed. You are afraid. I know this. And I wish to tell you that there is no need for fear. The fear is something you choose, and you can also choose to let it go."]

His dark eyes are looking at the camera and Eggsy can’t help but feel like they’re looking right at him.

["You have seen a world made small by the evil and violence you carry within you. On that February day, how many of you slew your neighbors? How many your husbands and wives? Your children? You have known my presence already. You have felt me in your heart of hearts."]

Another slow step back. The shadow of the church washes up to like black water to cover his face.

Eggsy and Merlin watch in silence.

["You do not even know how lost you are. How long you have been wandering in my dark woods with no way home.

"You have killed. You have beaten. You have spilled the blood of your own and the gates of Heaven are closed to you. You know this. What you don’t know is that it was always thus. Now, you merely recognize it. Now, you name it.]

Eggsy finds that he’s holding his breath, his hand clutching the arm of Merlin’s chair. The hair on the back of his neck is standing on end.

["You cried out to me, and I came. You looked for me, and I came. I am the devil _._ "

"I am _Dragkwlya_."]

Dracula steps into the church doorway and erupts into flames.

"Holy fuck!" says Eggsy, jerking away from the screen.

Dracula lifts his arms higher and laughs. High. Uncontrolled and convulsive.

The camera drops to the ground and Eggsy and Merlin can see nothing now but frantic feet, a crowd fleeing in panic. The laugh goes on.

Merlin cuts the feed. His face is pale. He takes a deep, shuddering breath and rubs his eyes, bending over his keyboard, elbows on this desk.

"Demented magician," he mutters. "You had the right of it, Eggsy."

"Right through his fucking heart, mate," Eggsy says, jabbing his finger against the screen. "He should be dead."

Merlin sits back in the chair, arms crossed, staring at the Kingsman crest on the monitor.

"Perhaps he was wearing a vest," he suggests. Eggsy can tell he doesn’t believe it.

"I saw the blood," says Eggsy.

"Then there’s only one way we can be sure," says Merlin slowly, giving in to the absolute absurdity of the situation. "We need the body."

"And by we…"

"I mean you. Naturally."

Eggsy rolls his eyes and heads for the cache in the back of the plane.

"Fine. But I’m taking more guns this time."

Eggsy loads his pistol and fills a few extra magazine tubes and drops them in a vest pocket. He takes the umbrella down too, tucking it under one arm. Then he rifles through the refreshments, wedging half a block of cheddar cheese between two pieces of bread, and shoving it into his maw in three, ungraceful bites.

"Who was you yelling at before?" Eggsy asks around his mouthful, suddenly remembering the garbled sound of Merlin covering the mic. "When I was in the village..."

"I was notifying our nearest agent that you might require backup," says Merlin.

"Our nearest agent is in France," says Eggsy.

Merlin hesitates. Eggsy sees the same odd expression he saw months ago, back when they were still trying to put Kingsman back together, as if Merlin’s fighting an inner battle of some kind.

"Even so," Merlin says eventually, "I had reason to believe you were going to encounter considerably more resistance than you did, and on my head be it if I didn’t make at least one desperate attempt to save your reckless hide."

Merlin is the best liar Eggsy knows, but right now, he isn’t even trying.

"Merlin," says Eggsy sitting down, brushing crumbs off his pants. He really needs to get going, but he figures they have time enough for this. "Why’re you here, bruv? You can make fun a’me just as easily from home. Any tosser could’ve flown the plane."

Merlin stares at him seriously. He looks guilty and sad. He looks sorry.

"You’re father was one of my trainees," says Merlin softly. "I stood there and watched him throw himself on that grenade much as any man in the room that day."

Eggsy should have guessed. Seems most of his conversations with the kingsman come back to this.

"Harry said it was his fault," said Eggsy. "That he missed the grenade."

"Harry has a habit of trying to assume the guilt of others," Merlin says. Eggsy decides not to correct his use of the present tense. He’s sleeping in in the man’s bed, after all, who’s he to judge? "We all missed it."

Eggsy takes a minute to decide what he’s going to say next. One of them is _I wish everyone would stop measuring me by the yardstick of me dad,_ but even as he thinks it, he realizes that’s not what Merlin means at all.

He thinks about Merlin’s voice, breaking like ice in his ear as Eggsy jumped balls first off a building.

"I don’t actually have a death wish, y’know," says Eggsy. "I know I tend to rush in without look’n and make a muck of things, but it’s not about—"  

"You don’t have to explain, Eggsy," Merlin stops him gently. He smiles then. It’s a sort of ungraceful, wobbling thing. "You’re not the only man trying to fill the shoes of Harry Hart."

Eggsy closes his eyes and nods. He tries very hard not to let the tiny quake in his chest come shuddering out.

"There weren’t no backup," Eggsy says, and despite his best efforts it comes out as a croak. "You was gonna come in after me yourself, wasn’t you?"

A look that Eggsy has no name for crosses Merlin’s face. For a second, Eggsy almost thinks he’s guessed wrong.

"At the eleventh hour," says Merlin, "if no other help could come, yes, I would have gone in after you."

Eggsy stretches his own wobbly smile back and they sit there together for moment, two sorry gents, missing the hell out of Harry fucking Hart.

"Why’re we talking ‘bout this?" Eggsy sighs hypothetically after a moment.

"Because I have to send you back out there," Merlin answers. "Dracula needs to keep his secret real. He needs people to believe him, and that means he needs the body. And now that I know how big this is, I can’t come in after you if you fuck it up. Someone has to be left to regroup and try again."

"You shoulda been a speechwriter," says Eggsy, keeping his face straight. "You could energize nations with moving shit like that."

"Go get me a dead vampire, would you please?" says Merlin. Eggsy grins.

"Hey, Merlin?" He asks before he gets up.

"Mm?"

"Is you ever gonna give Rox that kiss you been meanin’ to give her?"

Merlin’s face pales a little.

"I...Eggsy, that’s not..." he sighs, fingers picking at the edge of his chair. "It wouldn’t be entirely appropriate."

"Nah," says Eggsy. "But we don’t always get ta live long enough to regret the things we didn’t do, y’know?"

Merlin looks at Eggsy, somber and serious. Eggsy can tell they’re both still thinking of Harry.

 "I expect you have a point," Merlin says.

#

Eggsy finds the car where he left it, an empty, black shell in the dark.

"Sunrise is in three hours," says Merlin in his ear. "Be quick. You can’t be seen."

Eggsy drives like a maniac, Săpânța, where Dracula is, and the field are nearly equidistant from the dead Maramureș village, and Eggsy doesn’t know what kind of other resources Dracula has at his disposal. But if Eggsy can get there first and get out again it won’t matter.

He leaves the car when he gets close and sprints the final mile. Headlights winding up the road would be a dead give away.

Merlin is uncharacteristically quiet the entire time. Except to say, "This is a recovery mission, not another assassination attempt, don’t forget." as Eggsy runs.

He smells the village before he sees it. Ash and smoke, the heavy smell of things that have been thoroughly burnt to a crisp. The fire is still festering and the smoke hasn’t had time to disburse yet. It hangs low to the ground, like fog, and stings Eggsy’s eyes.

A spectre of guilt passes through him when he sees the low, smoldering remains of the village. He enters the village from the west, where he has more cover, slipping between the charred husks of houses, climbing carefully over collapsed roofs and buckled walls. The last of the flames are dimming and flickering as they starve to death with nothing more to burn.

Eggsy’s feet make no sound but hushed whispers in the ash. He flickers through the waste of his exhausted fire to the town center and crouches behind a lone gray wall that’s still standing. Eggsy leans around, peering into the open space of the village square.  

The body is gone.

"Shit," he breathes. "I’m too late."

"Shit," says Merlin. "Did they leave anything behind? Anything we can use as proof?"

"I’ll look."

Eggsy rises carefully and stands still, listening for a few minutes. If Dracula and his psychos are still about, Eggsy should be able to hear them, crashing about in the village remains. He hears only the crackle of coals. Feels only the heat still radiating off the ruins, getting under his clothes and making him sweat.

He walks slowly into the square. Footprints are scattered everywhere, milling about and crisscrossing in every direction.

"A bunch of them was here by the looks of it," says Eggsy and Merlin hums thoughtfully in his ear.

Eggsy follows the footprints backwards to their point of entrance. They came in the way Eggsy did the first time around, passing down the road between the trees where their victims were hanging and through the main street of the village. He doesn’t see any new tire tracks, which seems unusual. They couldn’t have walked here from Săpânța; and they had no reason to hide their coming.

Eggsy gets all the way to the edge, to the final house, doubled over on itself like a deflating balloon, and the tree where the wife and husband hang, before he realizes how enormously he’s just fucked up. Eggsy spins, opening his umbrella even as Merlin sucks in a sudden, panicked breath.

The footprints Eggsy followed went _in_ to the village. There had been no sign of them going back out.

Bullets fly out of the darkness and pelt down like around him like rain. The thunder of the guns rattles Eggsy to his bones. The force of the barrage shakes his umbrella so hard he can barely keep a grip on it. Eggsy takes a diving run for the cover of the tree. In the dark of the foliage he sees more figures rising to their feet, rushing forward like a tide to meet him.

"Merlin, I am so fucked!" He shouts over the gunfire, and runs faster. He can’t believe how fucking stupid he is, how completely he just _fucking missed it_. He drops the umbrella and jumps headfirst into the oncoming rush, distantly hoping that the maniacs firing on him from the village aren’t willing to mow down their own people just to take out one, measly little spy.

Eggsy whips his knife into one hand and pulls his pistol into the other. He flies into the first man like a rugby player, and climbs him as they fall so that his knees land hard on the side of the guy’s head. Underneath the impact, he feels the skull crack and the neck break. As he rises again he leads with the knife, slashing open the soft underside of someone’s chin, blows the brains out of a guy to his left without even looking. He catches an arm between his forearms as he turns, one arm above the elbow and one below, and twists. The elbow snaps. Eggsy buries his knife in the man’s eye and kicks him into the milling figures beyond.

He can’t keep this up. He’s uselessly outnumbered and in seconds he’s out of bullets and doesn’t have enough space, enough time, to stop fighting and reload. He bashes a head in with the butt of the gun, breaks a leg, kicks a guy in the nuts, head butts another, and keeps going. Kicking, breaking, tearing. Cold metal pushes against his head and he grabs it, shifting left so the bullet rips into the chest of an attacker. Then he breaks the thumb, the wrist, the forearm of the man holding the gun in three quick snaps and takes the gun, empties the barrel into hearts, stomachs and bodies.

Merlin’s voice leaves him early on when his glasses are punched from his face. He takes an elbow to the mouth and blood spreads across his tongue. A strange heaviness begins in his left arm as he’s wrenched back and forth. But it doesn’t feel real. Nothing is real except his own heart, beating, and his own body, killing. He should be terrified, scrabbling in desperation to hang on to these last seconds of life.

Instead, a stillness takes him inside and he fights like a dancer, slipping through the clutching fingers of giants and cutting them down. He is calm and placid, he is waveless, though all around him the ground and the sky and the bones of these dead men shake.

He knows he’s going to die.

He hopes that Merlin won’t blame himself. Merlin, who is miles away on a plane with no way to help and no way to even see what is happening now that Eggsy’s glasses are gone.

Breaks a spine, thumb into an eye socket, open palm slamming up into a nose, forcing the bones behind it to splinter and drive into the brain.

Eggsy is as alone as he’s ever been. And yet he isn’t.

Because he’s Galahad. And this is always how Galahad dies. Bloody and dragging his final triumphs with him into the dark. Eggsy is Galahad, and Harry was Galahad, and all the men before them, and as far as Eggsy is concerned, they’re all dying together now and it’s fine.

Hands shoot out of his blind spot and yank a wire against his throat.

The turmoil stills. Eggsy feels the garrote against his windpipe, pulling taught, splitting through the first few layers of skin.

He smiles, wide and demented, at the men who have stopped fighting him to watch him die. There is an abrupt, dangerous silence.

Then a lone gunshot rips through the night. Blood splatters against the back of Eggsy’s head and neck and the wire falls away. The man who would have killed him drops, loose and dead, to the ground.

Harry Hart takes his place, shoving a gun into Eggsy’s hands. "To the tree line," he says in Eggsy’s ear.

Eggsy asks no questions. There is no space in his mind for questions.

He lifts his arm around Harry’s shoulder and blows away the man coming in with a rifle to Harry’s left. Harry is firing, back of his arm against Eggsy’s chest, picking the men off, one by one, to their right.

Eggsy drops low, three, four, five, six, dead, past the small of Harry’s back. Harry sweeps a line of destruction above him, slits the throat of one person who gets too close with their own, ugly blade.  

Together, they rip their way out, two people fighting like one animal, and then plunge across the field at a dead run for the edge of the forest as more men filter out of the village after them, shouting and firing.

They break into the trees and Eggsy knows that Harry has a plan, though he can’t imagine what it is. He runs for seconds more, or hours more, until there, through the branches, he sees the light of dawn breaking through, and Eggsy barrels right through the light and back into the dark, where he knows nothing more. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More illustrations! As composed by the lovely and talented idontknowbutitsbjutifl. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Eggsy first enters the Maramureș Village.](http://idontknowbutitsbjutifl.tumblr.com/post/123716426120/this-is-a-background-practice-i-whisper-as-i)
> 
> ["..they're all dying together now and it's fine."](http://idontknowbutitsbjutifl.tumblr.com/post/124431266345/theyre-all-dying-together-now-and-its-fine)
> 
>  
> 
> I am a flailing tuft of glee.


	3. Chapter 3

"And as to being in a fright,  
Allow me to remark  
That Ghosts have just as good a right  
In every way, to fear the light,  
As Men to fear the dark."

 _from_ Phantasmagoria Canto I  
-Lewis Carroll

 

Eggsy floats slowly towards the surface of consciousness and finds a headache so terrible he turns around and tries to burrow back down. He swears he can feel every molecule of the atmosphere crushing down on top of him and his whole body aches. On the other side of his eyelids is the harsh, cold glare of daylight. It tries to pry him open, force him back into the world.

The dark is warmer, safer...

A gentle hand brushes across his forehead and slips into his hair.

Eggsy turns towards it, and the darkness is there to meet him.

#

The headache is knocking to be let in again. Softer this time. Eggsy takes a deep breath and groans, figuring he can’t ignore it forever.

"Eggsy?" asks a soft voice.

Eggsy’s eyes open themselves and he turns his head.

Sitting in a chair at his bedside, with forearms leaned on the mattress and his hands clasped together, is Harry. Eggsy knows he must be dreaming, but before he can think better of it—before that careful, desperate corner of himself can tell him _stop, no, you’ll break the spell_ —he’s reaching out to grasp Harry’s hand.

He feels warm, solid flesh beneath his palm. Harry turns his hand over and threads his fingers through Eggsy’s. He offers a small, tired smile.

"Harry," Eggsy croaks. He tries to get up, tries to swing himself out of bed, but Harry stops him, gently laying his other hand against Eggsy’s chest.

"Easy," Harry says. "You’ve just been through quite the ordeal."

Fuck that. Fuck whatever Eggsy has been through because none of it matters. Harry is alive. Doesn’t Harry understand how fucking miraculous that is? He’s _alive,_ and he’s sitting _right there,_ holding Eggsy’s hand. Eggsy scoots up to sit against a wooden headboard that smells of sawdust.

"Harry," he says again, stupidly. He’s at an utter loss for what to say.

The little smile again. But there’s something wrong with it, Eggsy sees now. Something two-dimensional and strained.

If Eggsy didn’t know better he would think Harry is terrified.

He looks around the room. It’s small, with one window, furnished with the bed, a chair, and a rug. The walls are a dull, clay red. He can see a small bathroom through the door on his right, and the other door must lead to the rest of wherever they are. Late afternoon sunlight streams through the window and falls across Harry’s still form.

Nothing about the scene screams "danger" to Eggsy.

"Here," says Harry, handing Eggsy an opened bottle of water. "You’re dehydrated." His voice is too quiet.

Eggsy takes the bottle and drains it. His head stops pounding quite so enthusiastically.  

Harry himself looks clean. He’s dressed in his usual suit. And for someone who was shot in the face, he still looks unfairly handsome. A disjointed scar begins above his right eye, reaching up his forehead and then splitting towards his temple like a tree branch. Thinner, lighter scars speckle around it.

 _Shards,_ Eggsy thinks, _from the glasses._

Eggsy looks at him, leaning his head back against the wall. He drinks in the sight of Harry, healthy and bright and _not dead_. Harry looks back, waiting. Eggsy can tell there’s something terrible happening inside Harry. It’s told in the softness around his mouth and eyes, in the heavy drape of his body.

Eggsy folds his legs underneath himself and leans forward, mindful of the way his body complains at him. He grabs a green, wool blanket that’s folded at the bottom of the bed and shakes it out. Then he turns, shuffles his way to the edge of the bed, and wraps it securely around Harry’s shoulders.

The complete surprise on Harry’s face would be funny, if it weren’t coupled with the expression of a man waiting for an axe to fall.

Eggsy nods his head in the direction of the bathroom.

"Does that shower have hot water?" he asks. "Cuz I am _rank_."

Harry’s smile is a little bigger, a little deeper, this time.

#

The shower is hot, smells a little like rust, and is absolutely, bleeding, _glorious._ Eggsy drinks probably half of it, cupping his hands to fill them and then dumping water down his throat. He’s thirsty in a way that he doesn’t remember ever being before and the water seems clean enough, despite the way it smells. It doesn’t taste anything like London water. He rather likes it.

A rough looking block of white soap sits in a small wire holder screwed into the shower wall. Eggsy washes every inch of himself, scrubbing the leftover bits of blood out of his hair and off the back of his neck. He digs the blood out from under his fingernails too. He covers himself in a slimy, soapy film, and then rinses all of it away.

The bruises he finds everywhere are livid and phenomenal. Black and orchid purple. A black eye has bloomed over a quarter of his face. And a thin cut, not yet scabbed over, runs a level horizon across the front of his throat. Eggsy examines it in the mirror over the sink when he’s finished. It’s shallow and hardly hurts at all.

His left shoulder is the real casualty. A bruise the size of a continent wraps around, front and back. The flesh is puffy and swollen, and when he rotates his arm, gingerly, wincing,  the bone slips and grinds in the socket.

"You look well fucked up, bruv," he mutters to his reflection.

Though he never heard the door open, Harry must have slipped in a change of clothes and a towel, because Eggsy finds them in a neatly folded pile just inside the door. He steps into a blissfully clean suit, buttoning it up painstakingly with one hand. The right cuff proves impossible.

"Think you could help a bloke out?" Eggsy asks stepping back into the bedroom, holding his right arm out and keeping the other still against his chest.

Harry is standing by the window looking out, hands folded over his elbows. He turns when Eggsy enters the room and the look on his face drives every other thought from Eggsy’s mind.

It’s a dark, hollow, helpless look. Like someone standing at an infinity of crossroads with no road signs and no map and nowhere to go anyway. Water shines in his eyes.

"Of course," Harry says quickly, crossing the room to Eggsy and pulling him over so they can both sit on the edge of the bed, "Of course. Allow me." He reaches up and gently fumbles at the cuff, fingers slipping over the button.

"Harry," says Eggsy.

"I don’t have a proper medical kit with me, I’m afraid. Nothing like what you require, anyway. You should really have that shoulder in a sling. We’ll have to get you checked out when we," his voice breaks and he clears his throat,  "when we get home."

"Harry," says Eggsy again, catching Harry’s wrist to stop him. There are tears on Harry’s face now, though he’s carrying on as if they aren’t there, but Eggsy came _this close_ to certain death just hours ago, and that didn’t terrify him nearly as much as the sight of Harry Hart with tears on his face.

Harry desists, letting his hands drift slowly down to his lap. He nods and takes a deep breath through his nose. They sit in silence for a few minutes. Eggsy, still holding onto Harry’s wrist, and Harry, staring at Eggsy’s hand.

"I’m feeling a little overwhelmed," Harry admits eventually. "It’s been a very long few months."

"You don’t have to tell me anything," says Eggsy.

"Of course I do," Harry scoffs. "Eggsy, what you must think of me...what I put you through. I looked in on you whenever I could, I saw what it did to you."

Eggsy thinks of floorboards settling and the smell of aftershave in the hall when he woke up. He thinks of the pathetic echoes of his own heartbroken sobs, night after night.

He thinks if Harry hadn't already guessed Eggsy's secret before he left for Kentucky, he has no need for guessing now.

"You can be a serious creeper, you know that?" he says. Harry huffs a harsh laugh.

"I’m a spy; they pay me to be a ‘creeper’. Eggsy, I owe you an explanation."

"Seriously, Harry, you don’t. I can guess the parts I really need to know," says Eggsy. "Valentine weren’t the only lunatic, Arthur was compromised, other intelligence agencies was compromised, people _in_ Kingsman...takes a dead spy to spy on spies, yeah?"

"Something like that, yes."

"An’ Merlin couldn’t tell me cuz that would put your cover at risk."

Harry looks surprised that Eggsy’s guessed Merlin’s part, but it only makes sense. Harry would have needed resources, and more intelligence than he could have gathered on his own while remaining completely off the grid.

"That’s still no excuse," says Harry, "for what I did to you."

Eggsy has to stops this conversation before it can take him out at the knees. He’s not ready for it. Not yet.

"I’m a shit actor, Harry," he says, flatly.

Harry raises a dignified eyebrow through his tears.

"Alright, that’s crap," Eggsy admits. "But there’s people I can’t fool. And if I’d known, then they’d’ve known, an’ that’s a slippery slope."

"Eggsy," says Harry and Eggsy hears that dark pit in his voice. That horrible something Eggsy can’t begin to guess at. He realizes suddenly that this conversation isn’t just about Harry apologizing for running off and being dead and breaking Eggsy’s heart for six months.

He sees, in a moment, what Harry must be seeing every time he closes his eyes. Blood soaked wooden pews and sightless, staring eyes. A congregation spread across the floor of their sanctuary like the spoils of a butcher’s yard.

"It weren’t your fault," Eggsy whispers.

Harry closes his eyes and takes a deep breath through his nose. When he opens them again he looks pointedly into Eggsy’s gaze.

"I’m so very sorry, Eggsy," he whispers, and Eggsy knows he’s apologizing for everything. For the things he said before he left, for the people he killed in Kentucky, for dying right before Eggsy’s eyes and taking half of Eggsy’s life with him...

Harry takes a shuddering breath and loses his white-knuckle grip on his composure. He covers his eyes with his hand and cries like the world ended after all.

Eggsy doesn’t know what to do, but he thinks he’d probably rather have his other arm dislocated than see Harry hurting like this. He reaches across the bed for the discarded blanket and drags it back over.

"This is what happens when you take your blanket off, see," he mumbles meaninglessly, wrapping Harry up again.

" _God,_ Eggsy, what did I…?" Harry gasps.

"Weren’t your fault," Eggsy tells him again. "I swear on me grandmother’s grave, it weren’t your fault, Harry. _None of it._ "

Harry’s fingers close around Eggsy’s hand and grip like Eggsy is the only thing between him and the drop that leads to the bottom of existence. Eggsy gives up on decorum and pretending like he’s dignified and whole instead of dead in love with this man and wraps his arms around Harry’s shoulders, pulling him in.

He wants to say _It’s gonna be okay, it’s all gonna be okay,_ but he knows the world better than that. So instead he holds on tight as he can while Harry falls apart, and tries to convey through silence that if the world wants to bury them, it’s going to have to bury them together.

#

"Have you ever spent a very long time in a very dark room, Eggsy?" Harry asks some time later. They’ve eaten and packed and are getting ready to leave for Săpânța. Harry is holding a one use cell phone in his hand—they need to call Merlin, _should_ have called Merlin hours ago—and looking slightly sheepish.  

Eggsy thinks about the question for a minute. Back to the early days with his mum and Dean, when he too small to defend himself and too young to escape to the street. He used to hide in his bedroom closet when Dean would come home, drunk and shouting. Dean had never raised a hand in those days, to either Eggsy or his mum, but just the thunder of his voice was like the sky falling down.

"Yeah," says Eggsy.

"Do you remember what it felt like to come back out?"

Eggsy remembers sitting beneath the soft brush of his coats, huddled behind the trash bags where his winter clothes were folded up for summer storage. He remembers missing lunch and dinner, waiting until he was so hungry he couldn’t stand it anymore, before finally emerging after Dean and his mother had gone to sleep. He remembers feeling like he’d rather never come out at all, thinking that it might be better to starve to death, hidden safely in the dark.

And that was only after a day. Harry has been living in the dark for six months.

Harry meets his eyes. Overall Harry looks much more like himself.

"Don’t you dare go apologiz’n again," Eggsy says quickly before Harry can speak.

Harry smiles softly. He lays a warm hand on Eggsy’s shoulder, gathering his thoughts. Then he sweeps his hand up, tracing the line of Eggsy’s neck to fit around the curve of his jaw.

"Thank you, Eggsy," he says. His brown eyes aren’t distant at all now. They’re bright and happy, and looking at Eggsy in a way that makes him feel like he’s standing in a puddle of sunshine.

"For what?" Eggsy manages to ask.

"Simply for being who you are, my dear boy," says Harry. "I imagine it’s not a sentiment that’s been expressed to you often in your life, but you really are extraordinary."

Eggsy sincerely doubts he will ever be the kind of person who can form a coherent response to something like that. He can feel the blush in his toes and he’s dangerously close to saying something stupid like, _Aww shucks,_ or _I really fucking love you._ So he reaches deep to get a fucking grip and takes the cellphone out of Harry’s hand.

"We better call Merlin," he mumbles, knowing his face is still red.

Harry just keeps smiling fondly at him for a moment, brushing a thumb against Eggsy’s cheek. Eggsy’s heart races, slamming around in his ribcage like a bull.

"Yes, we’d better," Harry says and steps away to finish packing.

Eggsy checks the signal and dials Merlin’s personal cell number, half dazed. And while the phone rings on the other end he chances a glance over at Harry and wonders if any of what just happened means what he thinks (hopes) it does.

"Eggsy?" Merlin answers, sounding like he’s just hurdled through an obstacle course to get to his phone. Eggsy can tell from Merlin’s voice that he’s been praying for this call and a little guilt crawls up his spine.

"Hey, Merlin," says Eggsy. Merlin exhales on the other end of the line.

"God, lad," he says, "I was sure you were dead. There were forty hostiles on the ground at least, I was _so sure..._ how did you get out?"

"Uh, Harry saved me." There’s a short pause.

"He’s there with you now?" Merlin asks.

"Yeah," Eggsy looks at Harry, who is sitting on the bed watching Eggsy’s conversation with a peculiar expression of chagrin on his face.

"Then do me a favor, Eggsy. And tell our former agent Galahad that I don’t appreciate being made to feel like a one-night stand, and that when I call I expect him to _call me the bloody hell back._ Also, that I am fucking _furious_ and will be placing him under a mandatory, lifetime, psychological hold the MOMENT he returns."  

"Um," says Eggsy.

"Is he coming back?" Merlin asks quickly, ire replaced with worry.

Harry nods his head, looking at the ground.

"Yeah he is," says Eggsy. "Merlin, I thought you was in on it? On Harry not bein’ dead."

"I was!" Merlin growls. "Until a month ago, when he completed his mission and then simply stopped reporting. I’ve been calling him in out of the field everyday since and he never responds. I was worried he really had shuffled off this miserable mortal coil."

Eggsy watches Harry, who is pointedly staying on the other side of the room. He shrugs helplessly under Eggsy’s gaze.

 _A very long time in a very dark room,_ Eggsy thinks.

"Also, I am sorry for lying to you, Eggsy," Merlin is saying, more moderately.

"Is Harry who you called for backup?" Eggsy asks suddenly. "When I went in after Dracula?"

"Yes," says Merlin. "When you mentioned someone had broken into Harry’s house to look at the flash drive I thought it might be Harry, looking after you in his well meant but VERY INCONVENIENT AND UNPROFESSIONAL WAY. I thought if anything could draw him out..."

"Ah," says Eggsy.

"I’ll charter a plane to come pick you two up," Merlin goes on. "What’s the status of your mission?"

"Well, I didn’t kill forty people with me bare hands last night," says Eggsy. "So Dracula’s still out there."

"We’ll take care of that sociopath tonight," says Harry from the bed. "Have Merlin send the plane to Săpânța."

"Harry says—"

"I heard him," Merlin interrupts. "I’ll arrange it. You bring him home, Eggsy," says Merlin.

"I will," Eggsy promises.

"Very good. I’ll see you both tomorrow then. In person."

"Right," says Eggsy and disconnects the call. He breaks the phone in half, removes the SIM card and snaps that with his teeth, then chucks all the pieces in the toilet.

The room is getting dark as it gets later in the evening. Eggsy had realized he slept through most of the day, but it’s later than he thought. Vast shadows are creeping upwards from the floor.

"I think you might be grounded," Eggsy says to Harry, sitting next to him.

"I suspect I deserve it," Harry answers. He flashes a half smile in Eggsy’s direction and it takes all of Eggsy’s willpower not to lean forward and kiss him. But Eggsy doesn’t know where they stand on that count yet. Harry spent half of his months in exile tailing Eggsy’s shadow, making sure he always surfaced from his missions intact. Undoubtedly, those were acts of love, but Eggsy knew already that Harry cared for him. It was evident in every conversation they ever had before Kentucky. And Eggsy knows now that Harry loves him, he came back from the dead for Eggsy after all, but Eggsy doesn’t know which kind of love it is.

And to be honest, he’s a little afraid to ask.

"What’s the deal with this nutcase playin’ pretend at bein’ Dracula, do you think?" Eggsy brings up a different subject he deems safe. "People have got to be able to see through it. It’s fucking stupid. Nobody believes in monsters anymore." He leaves out the part where Merlin almost had _him_ convinced. Not everybody is as much of a freak as Eggsy.

"Don’t they?" Harry asks in return. "We’re still reeling from Valentine. For the first time since World War II, we’ve been presented with proof of real evil on a global scale. Evil with power. Evil in the form of altruism, rather than insanity. Valentine brought back fears that we were just beginning to overcome with the coming of age of the post-war generations. Now, global relations are fractured all over again. Most of the major superpowers have been crippled. And neighbors walk outside every day and see the faces of the people who tried to kill them in the driveway next door. They wake up in bed beside the people they tried to kill themselves...

"Evil doesn’t have to win the war to damage the psyche of nations, Eggsy. Small victories, the right ones, are just as devastating. And in the wake of Valentine, it will take even less. One madman with his pseudo-philosophy and magic tricks: one monster out of our oldest childhood nightmares? People will believe. Not all, perhaps, but enough."

Put like that, Eggsy sees what all the fuss is about.

"What do we do?" Eggsy asks, instead of _‘How do we do it?’_ which is what he means to ask. He regrets the phrase as soon as it’s out of his mouth. He hears how young and uncertain it makes him sound.

Harry picks up his pistol and begins reloading it.

"Sneak our way in," says Harry, "assassinate a vampire, kill our way out."

Eggsy feels a smile stretch across his face that begins in the restless twitch of his fingers. The smile isn’t young at all. It’s cold and sharp, like a good knife in his hand.

A soft look of heartache forms in Harry's eyes.

"The things we do to young people in the name of peace," he murmurs to himself, shaking his head.

Eggsy’s smile fades. He thinks about Harry, waking up in a hospital full of strangers who didn’t know who his name, who could _never_ know his name. He thinks about bruises and stitches and weeks of physical therapy in a vacuum, with nothing but coded, cagey communications from Merlin. He thinks about waking up, thinking you should be dead, and not being able see a single friendly face for six fucking months.

"The things we do to anybody," he says looking right into Harry’s surprised brown eyes.

#

Săpânța in the dark.

Steepled rooftops and power lines against the sky. Poorly paved roads and closed shops, cold cars along the side of the street. A silence stretches through the center of town in the form of unlit windows and buckled asphalt.

Eggsy recognizes it, this form of un-noise. It’s the sound of total emptiness. The hollow ache of houses with no occupants. He heard the same stillness in the Maramureș village when he first arrived, before he saw the hanging black shapes in the trees.

"Not again," he whispers, walking a little faster. "Fuck, fuck, _fuck,_ not again."

"Perhaps not yet," Harry whispers beside him, slowing him down with a hand. "Săpânța is much bigger than the village was. Even with an army, which Dracula doesn’t have, he couldn’t hang three thousand people in a day. We should still have time."

Eggsy and Harry walk side by side through the street, breathing shallow and listening deep. There are no signs of life anywhere. Wordlessly, in unspoken agreement, they make their way towards the monastery where the most recent video was filmed. As they get closer they move off the road, slipping between buildings and staying out of the moonlight.

As he ducks and runs behind the darkened husk of an inn, Eggsy sees a shape out of the corner of his eyes, a motionless silhouette on the road. He stops, trades a glance with Harry, and goes back, crouching low behind a garden hedge and peering carefully over.

Here, closer to the center of the town, there are people in the street. Countless people, all resting on their knees with their hands tied behind their backs. Pillowcases or empty flour bags are pulled over their heads. They don’t talk to each other, or turn their heads. They kneel, swaying and shifting, in terrified silence.

No guards stand watch over them. But they behave as people whose every move can be seen.

Eggsy feels Harry move up on his left, looking out at the street. In the house to their right, through the window, the blue flickering of a television has been left on and plays to an empty room.

A few, some of the elderly or the very young, have already collapsed forward, either unable bear the pain in their knees, or too tired to hold themselves up any longer. They lie face down on the ground.

The ragged gasps of someone sobbing quietly trickles down to them from further up the street.

Harry’s hand comes to rest against the small of Eggsy’s back. He catches Eggsy’s eye, and his look is like the black windows of the empty buildings.

Eggsy can’t imagine what his own face looks like, but he can feel, from the ocean depths he never knew he possessed until last night, that inner, placid calm rising up to wash over his entire body. Eggsy thinks, looking again to the trembling forms of the people on the road: _No more of this._

He pulls his knife from his belt and continues on, Harry following like a shadow behind him.

The monastery is in the eastern most corner of the town. Up the gradual slant of an incline, where the houses peter out and tall, dense trees take over on either side of a dirt road. Harry and Eggsy stick to the edge of the forest, in the heavy contrast between hazy white light and total darkness. The closer to the Monastery they get, the more and the closer the towns people, kneeling like wordless headstones, are gathered. Until suddenly, the motionless crowd ends. Before them rises a pile of twenty or thirty bodies, stacked like firewood.

Eggsy sees the sleeve of an officer’s uniform on an arm that hangs from the pile and understands why no one beside himself and Harry has come. There’s nobody in the region left to enforce order. Most of the official law enforcement, he knows, have been relocated to the major cities and government centers, to help keep a relative peace while the unstable politics of Romania resolved themselves.

Just on the other side of the stacked bodies, a low gallows has been built. Standing on the platform are five children. They stand trembling on stools, with white linen bags over their heads and ropes around their necks. A sixth hangs freely, limp; the stool capsized beneath his feet.

 _This is why no one is fighting back,_ Eggsy realizes. This was how Dracula pulled a town’s entire population into the streets and put them on their knees.

Unmanned TV cameras on tall tripods have been fixed on the gallows. Eggsy remembers the flickering television through the empty house window. He thinks he can guess what it was showing.

Three men with machine guns and black masks stand at the gallows, looking out over the complacent populace. The monastery is still several hundred yards further on. It’s much taller than Eggsy had thought from the recording he and Merlin saw on the plane. The cone of the roof stabbing up towards the sky, well above the treetops.

From inside comes the deep hum of a hundred voices chanting.

Eggsy turns to Harry and leans in close to him.

"Kids first," he breathes in a hush into Harry’s ear. Harry’s eyes scan over the otherwise empty clearing and he nods.  

"No guns" Harry whispers back. "A shout might go unheard, but" he tips his head toward the rumbling sound of the chanting, "a gunshot will certainly draw attention. When the children are free, I’ll go inside disguised as one of the guards. Can you get in from above, unnoticed?"

From here, Eggsy can see a wood shed and the low roof of an antechamber in the back of the monastery, set against the high stone base that rises up for twenty feet before wooden railings and walls make up the first floor. Basement windows, set maybe seven feet from the ground, are fitted in the walls. The chanting is muffled, coming from below. Assuming the basement ceiling is high enough, and the windows set in among the rafters, they way he’d seen in some of the older English churches...

Eggsy nods.

"I’ll get as close to our resident lunatic as I can before firing," Harry goes on. Then he pauses and looks at the monastery thinking. He turns back to Eggsy, "If he’s half the narcissistic shit I think he is, he’ll be streaming whatever is going on in there."

Eggsy doesn’t understand the significance of that right away. He starts to ask, and then remembers the fringe groups in the States.

"You want to prove he ain’t immortal," Eggsy whispers.

"If I can," Harry confirms. "If it goes tits up..."

Eggsy understands. He’ll kill Dracula from above, drop down, and then he and Harry can make a break for the door and maybe get out alive.

 _Both of us,_ he thinks, _get out alive._ One or neither. Eggsy isn’t leaving Harry on his own again.

Harry’s hand drops to Eggsy’s shoulder and gently brushes across it.

"Be careful, Eggsy."

"You too," says Eggsy.

Then he’s darting out of the trees through the tall grass and the underbrush and into the moonlight. He slides his knife into the windpipe of the first guard before he even sees Eggsy coming. Harry is darting silently past him, breaking the neck of the next man in the same moment. Harry grabs the third as he turns, jamming his knuckles into the throat to stop a shout from forming and twisting around to hold him from behind, one hand over the guard’s mouth as Eggsy puts the knife between his ribs.

A noise like the gurgle of a brook issues out of the guard’s throat and Harry lets him drop.

Eggsy jumps on to the gallow’s platform and one by one, goes to the five children and removes the bags from their heads. They aren’t gagged, but their wide eyes are frightened and dazed. Eggsy lifts his finger to his lips, warning them to be quiet, then he cuts them down one at a time and helps them off the stools. Harry stands behind each, making sure they don’t collapse.

The sixth they cut down and lay gently across the platform. Eggsy kneels and takes the bag off, folds it, and tucks it like a pillow under the boy’s head. He wonders how many minutes or hours too late they are to save him. Harry brushes the back of his finger against Eggsy’s temple.

When they’re done, Eggsy turns to the other children, who are huddled together, watching. He gives his knife to the oldest of them, a dark eyed girl with black curls who might be twelve or thirteen, and he points in the direction of the road, and the kneeling townspeople.

Her fingers, trembling, close around the hilt of the knife and she nods. Drawing up straight, she leads the other children away. Obedient and quiet. 

Next, Harry slips on one of the guard’s jackets and pulls a mask over his face. He nods at Eggsy, then begins a leisurely walk to the front doors of the monastery.

Eggsy bolts to the left for the tree line opposite the road. When reaches it he turns a sharp left and hauls ass for the wood shed and the back of the church, jumping snarls of briars and fallen tree limbs. He wonders, crazily, if there are wolves in the woods? When he’s level with the woodshed he sprints into its shadow and tiptoes alongside the outside wall.

Three windows, side by side, are level with the roof of the antechamber. Inside, lit by the soft glow of what must be a hundred candles, he can see the crisscrossing light and shadow of wide wooden rafters. The window has no glass at all, it’s just a wood-framed hole in the wall.

From the direction of the road, the rustling sound of hushed murmurs and movement begins, as people are cut free and start to rise.

Eggsy pulls himself up to the slanted roof of the antechamber and eases his way to the window. From here, the chanting is almost deafening.

The window proves just barely wide enough to allow for Eggsy’s shoulders, but he manages to squeeze through. He slides in, head first, as quietly as he can. The effort requires both of his arms and his left shoulder grinds and throbs. Eggsy screws up his face and holds his breath. He comes to lie flat on his belly on the rafter just below the window.

It occurs to him that this building must be at _least_ a hundred years old. But the oak beam feels strong enough under his weight.

Inside, the monastery is much nicer than its weathered and gray exterior suggests. White marble gleams across the floor and white and yellow brick curves across the walls. There are no pews or platforms, except for a few low, polished benches tucked alongside the very edges of the room. A white cross lays half smashed in a corner, and the effigies and pictures of saints have been covered by black sheets.

Below, Dracula stands before a podium, dressed in white. He’s cutting open a plastic blood pack and squeezing the contents into a wide mouth wine glass. Eggsy feels ill.

In front of the door, facing Dracula on their knees, are the disciples. They chant in unison, heads bowed, fingers laced together and palms upturned as if they’re waiting to receive something.

Just as Harry guessed, cameras are fixed around the room from various angles. Their wires strung back and forth like cobwebs.

With the blood pack emptied, Dracula lifts the glass and takes a deep, slow sip. Then he carries the glass to the first of his disciples and hands it down. Without hesitating, the disciple drinks and hands the blood to the next in line.

Seriously, Eggsy is going to blow the whole plan by vomiting if this keeps up.

Dracula returns to the podium and produces a silver thurible. Yellow smoke begins to issue noxiously forth as it swings from his hand. A rotten, decayed smell fills the room.

As the chanting swells, Dracula joins in.

Eggsy lifts himself up on his right forearm and reaches, with difficulty, for his shoulder holster, carefully pulling out his gun.

Harry comes through the door with urgency. He touches the shoulders of the two closest men and points behind him outside, as if indicating a problem. The men hold the door open and look out while Harry crosses the room, walking around the kneeling mass of satanic disciples at prayer, to the thin, dark haired man in the center of the candlelight.

Dracula stops his chants and holds up his hand. Like a fire guttering out, the tidal noise of the ceremony stops.

Now, Eggsy can hear the sound of bold voices growing angry outside.

Harry’s gun is already in his hand. He raises it and fires two shots, one into each of Dracula’s thighs. They’re calculated, meant to bring Dracula to his knees before Harry kills him.

It doesn’t work. Dracula doesn’t even flinch.

"I have known," says Dracula, casually, words heavy with his accent, "that a man like you would come."

A bitter taste fills Eggsy’s mouth and a low, steady buzzing fills his ears. Still holding the thurible, Dracula reaches behind his back and Eggsy sees a flash of silver-black where Dracula has a handgun hidden beneath his jacket.

A deafening, hollow silence, and the hum of a laptop speaker in his mind, Eggsy is jumping before the thought can even fully form.

_The black barrel of Valentine’s gun and the lens of Harry’s glasses splintering apart. Cracked sky reeling above._

Dracula’s hand moving, like an hour hand swinging to midnight. Eggsy could have easily shot him from behind in the rafters, but Eggsy isn’t acting on reason. He’s moving on desperation alone, yanked forward by panic and the memory of

_black ocean of asphalt and Valentine’s shoes, turning away. A thin trickle of blood into the video feed. And neither a grunt nor a gasp from Harry. Silence from Harry._

Eggsy catches his hand on a lower rafter, swinging. A loud _pop_ sounds next to his ear and he falls. Then his feet hit the ground and Eggsy rolls with the impact, thigh, shoulder, head tucked. He straightens his knees and twists, right arm coming up with his gun. Dracula pulls the trigger, but it’s alright, because Eggsy is between the bullet and Harry. The shot hits him square in the chest.

Eggsy barely feels it. He’s painless. Fearless. And that silence, the horrible, sweeping, mouth of silence that has made such a wreck of him for so long, is cut short when Eggsy guns the monster down.

There are nine bullets exactly in his gun. He puts eight into Dracula’s heart, one after the other, and the ninth through the center of his forehead.

The sound of the gunshots fade. Eggsy watches dispassionately as Dracula drops, limp as a marionette, to the white marble.

A voice is shouting his name.

"Eggsy!" It’s Harry. Harry, who is alive and rushing to close the few feet of distance between them, ripping the mask from his face.

Eggsy tries to lift his arm, let Harry know he’s okay, but it won’t move. A hideous, white hot pain smolders into the edge of his awareness. Eggsy ignores it. From his other hand he drops the gun, since it’s empty anyway.

"Eggsy," Harry says again, sliding to a halt and grabbing hold of Eggsy. His hands run frantically across Eggsy’s chest and stomach, looking for blood, looking for holes. He finds the bullet, warped and crunched, in the fabric of the bulletproof tie. "Jesus, Eggsy," he gasps in relief, "we had a perfectly good plan, must you always extemporize?" his voice is shaking and his face is white. He cups his hands around Eggsy face, eyes searching.   

Eggsy loses all his questions about whether or not Harry loves him in that moment.

He feels like he’s wading through water. He spent the last six months staying awake every night to talk to a ghost, waking up from nightmares to talk to a ghost again, going back to the nightmares because they were the only place the ghost was real.

He’s exhausted, and it’s not the miles he ran the day before or the bloodbath he cut his way through. He’s been white-knuckling his way through every sunrise for so long, keeping upright by the strength of his fingertips. And now, suddenly, he doesn’t have to hold on so hard anymore.

He must have been falling for the past fourteen hours, but either through cruel design or bad luck, _now_ is when he hits the bottom. Now, with the body of a would-be dictator at his feet and a hundred satanists slowly breaking out of their trance of disbelief to stand up and beat Eggsy bloody with their fists, now is when Eggsy loses his shit. Now is when he can’t keep his poor, bruised heart together anymore and it just spills out, all over the floor.

"We’re getting you a fucking desk job," Eggsy hears himself say, choked and hoarse. Harry’s soft expression breaks.

— _trickle of blood into the video feed._

Eggsy closes his eyes, tries to keep his breakdown at bay.

Harry turns suddenly and shoots the cameras positioned around the room, one after the other.

"Harry. _Fuck,_ " Eggsy is gasping, hyperventilating, trying to get a proper breath in. _"_ I fuckin’ missed you. I missed you so much." He’s sinking, knees to the floor, he doesn’t have the strength left to stand.

He knows they don’t have time for this, can’t believe Harry hasn’t already yanked him back up so they can start running for their lives. But Harry is folding down with him to the marble, wrapping his arms around Eggsy and pulling him close.

Dimly, in the same space where Eggsy is aware of the pain in his shoulder, Eggsy hears the sounds of pandemonium. He hears the ebb and break of a storm, the crashing sounds of revolution.

He turns his head a little, from where his face is plastered into Harry’s shoulder, and sees the people of Săpânța streaming through the door. They have logs of firewood and ropes and fury in their hands.

Eggsy turns his face back into the soft safety of Harry and loses it while Săpânța saves itself. Harry brushes his fingers through Eggsy’s hair, down the back of his neck and murmurs soft words.

Around them, evil is strangled and bludgeoned to death by the wrath of ordinary people.

"It’s alright, my dear boy," Harry is whispering. "Oh, Eggsy. It’s alright now."

#

The plane is waiting for them in a clearing just south of town.

Eggsy and Harry stumble together through the weeds and the brambles to the bright light of the open door. Eggsy’s left arm is wrapped in a makeshift sling torn out of a dead man’s clothes. A doctor, with dark eyes and a kind face behind the bruises, had set his shoulder back into place right there in the monastery basement.

"We’re very grateful to you," he’d told Eggsy in smooth English, after the mind numbing agony and the loud _pop_ of the joint returning had faded. "Very grateful."

Eggsy, lying down on a hard marble floor, had looked up at him and tried to remember how to speak.

"Actually," Eggsy had said, "we was never here." Harry, standing behind the doctor, had smiled warmly at this.

The doctor nodded in understanding.

"Still," he’d said as put Eggsy’s knife (the one he’d given to the girl who, Eggsy now thinks, had eyes very much like the doctor’s) into Eggsy’s hand and covered his heart with a palm. "We only pretend to forget."

On the plane, two new pairs of glasses are waiting on plush leather seats. Eggsy and Harry sit down and slip them on while the engines begin to whine outside the windows.

"You both," Merlin says immediately, "look absolutely fucking terrible."

"I look fine, actually," Harry argues. And he does, hair swept into place, tie centered. He reaches for a decanter of scotch.

"Alright," says Merlin. "Then Eggsy looks bad enough for both you."

"He does," Harry agrees softly.

"Fuck both of ya sideways," Eggsy mumbles, accepting the tumbler Harry hands him. He downs the scotch in three burning swallows.

"I’ll debrief you when you arrive," Merlin says. "And a medical team will meet you in the hanger."

Eggsy tips his head back against the seat and closes his eyes.

"You’re still the guv’nor, Merlin," he mumbles.

#

True to Merlin’s word, a doctor and two nurses in blue are waiting to ambush Eggsy the moment the plane lands. Merlin is there too, tablet in hand. He talks quietly with Harry while Eggsy is poked and prodded.

In short order, Eggsy is herded off to the medical wing, where the doctor takes x-rays and asks him about forty different versions of the same ten questions. They fit him with a proper sling.

Harry is looked over too, in a separate room, standard procedure. Eggsy also overhears Harry’s annoyed--"A _psychiatric_ evaluation? I thought that was all bluster, Merlin,"; "You have two weeks to arrange an appointment, Harry, or I _am_ placing you under a mandatory hold..."--as Harry and Merlin pass through the hall.

Two hours later, the doctor finally hands Eggsy a prescription bottle of pain medication with pills the size of cockroaches inside. "As needed," he says, "for your shoulder. Or one every six hours. Apply ice when you get home. Two minutes on, five minutes off. Do that a couple of times a day for the next few days. The rest of your contusions are mild to moderate. It’s possible you have a cracked rib from the gunshot, but since you’re not having trouble breathing I doubt it. Still, if you start to notice a sharp pain, come back. Understand?"

Eggsy nods. The doctor tells him he’s free to leave. Eggsy bangs the hell out of there before they can think of another test to run.

He walks stiffly from the medical wing to Merlin’s office. His legs are starting to feel cramped and sore. His shoulder throbs. He swallows a painkiller, dry.  

Harry is already in Merlin’s office. Eggsy can hear them talking from the other side of the door when he arrives.

"...every right to be furious with both of us," Merlin is saying.

"He isn’t," Harry replies. "I thought so too, but he isn’t."

"We hurt him," says Merlin firmly.

"I more than you," Harry says softly.

Eggsy rolls his eyes. Someday, he’ll get all these stuffy upper-class types to understand what kinship is like at the bottom of the food chain. Some people in your life get forgiveness without an apology. The people who pick you up out of blood and dirt and help you brush yourself off. The people who save your life. The people who help you build a new one. And with a few people, a very few, forgiveness isn’t necessary at all. Because any mistake they make pales in comparison to the love they’ve shown you already.

He knocks on the door and walks in.

"What's doin’?" he asks, pretending he doesn’t know.

"Galahad," says Merlin. Both he and Harry fall into easy, open postures as if they’d just been discussing the weather." Excellent timing. Come watch yourself save the world. I had the live feed recorded."

"Sweet," says Eggsy and joins them to look at the monitors on Merlin’s desk.

He sees the blur of the suit he’s still wearing swing down from the ceiling of the Săpânța monastery on a grainy video. He also sees the sudden, awkward drop he takes from the beam when his shoulder dislocates and forces him to let go. He winces.

"Fucking ouch," he says. Merlin pats him gently on the back.

On the screen, Eggsy hits the marble rolling and comes up with his gun raised. He takes a bullet to the chest and then empties his clip in nine, successive shots.

Dracula drops.

"Well done," Merlin murmurs.

Then Harry charges into view, carelessly ripping the mask from his face so he can check Eggsy for bullet holes. Turning and pointing his gun at the screen.

The feed goes black. Merlin shuts it off and tactfully doesn’t chide Harry for destroying evidence just so that Eggsy could have a little privacy for his meltdown.

"And now," says Merlin, opening a new file on the screen, "answers."

A picture of a thin face Eggsy recognizes appears.

"Apostol Petrescu," Merlin says. He taps his tablet and another picture pulls up alongside the first. It’s the same face, _almost._ Now that they are side by side Eggsy can see subtle differences. "And Emil Petrescu."

"Twins?" Harry asks.

"Brothers," Merlin says, "but not twins, though the resemblance is uncanny. Emil was two years younger than Apostol. I think it was Emil you shot in Maramureș, Eggsy."

"How can you tell?" Eggsy asks.

"Well, the videos from the monastery are too poor in quality to make any positive identifications, which is lucky for both of you, flying in like bloody superheroes the way you did. However..." Merlin pulls up the clip of Dracula at the demonstration, burning from head to toe.

"Assuming he covered himself in an alcohol accelerant of some kind, rubbing alcohol maybe, and then doused the fire quickly enough, his skin wouldn’t be damaged too much. However the _heat_ of that would be phenomenal. Extreme discomfort is a mild way of putting it. That, coupled with this..." he pulls up the clip of Harry shooting Apostol in the legs. "His body language shows a complete lack of sensory reaction. He’s just been _shot_ , but he's showing no signs of pain.

"I tracked down his medical records and had them translated. Apostol was born with a congenital insensitivity to pain. His brother didn’t have it. And when I reviewed the video of the man you shot in the Maramureș village, I saw clear signs of pain."

"Huh," says Eggsy. "What about his body? Emile’s body."

"There’s been no sign of it," Merlin answers. "Which only makes sense. When you’re trying to convince the world that you’re an immortal devil it would be inconvenient to have the dead body of your doppelganger turn up."

True enough.

"What’s the advantage of masquerading as the same man?" Harry wonders out loud.  

"I’m sure there are several," Merlin answers.  "Getting to claim immortality if one of you dies not the least of them. And your cause can easily be carried on if you are assassinated, as Emil was. No instability as a new leader is elected, the succession is already settled. They had to know they would become targets eventually."

"Any sign they was cozy with Valentine?" Eggsy asks.

"No direct connections," says Merlin. "Though Apostol was clearly a fan of Valentine’s work. I believe he was also the driving force behind the movement.

As for the fringe groups, Lancelot is in Illinois right now, there are a few lingering troublemakers. Most of the bigger groups have gone quiet since the two of you put on your dramatic little finale. A group in Texas has already dissolved. Two other cult leaders were apprehended by American law enforcement. All in all, well done both of you."

"Thanks," says Eggsy.

Merlin turns off the monitors. He spends a moment gathering together the papers on his desk before turning to look sharply at Eggsy.

"On an unrelated note," he says, "if you ever pull something like you did in Maramureș again, I’ll see to it you need therapy to get over the therapy I put you in for the rest of your life."

"Fair ‘nuff," Eggsy mumbles, looking at the floor.

"And _you,_ " Merlin rounds on Harry, "I’m considering having _you_ locked up in a padded room with nothing but crayons and coloring books for the next year at least."

Eggsy looks up and opens his mouth to defend Harry but Merlin runs him over.

"But I also understand why you what you did," he says. "The past six months have been hard on everyone, you two most of all. So instead of drugging you to complacency and selling you as case studies to whatever private institution will pay the most, I’m putting both of you on three weeks mandatory leave. Effective immediately. Now," Merlin looks back and forth between both of them, exasperated "go the fuck home."

Eggsy nods.

"Thanks, Merlin," he says softly and pushes off the desk where he’d been leaning to leave. Merlin puts his tablet down and grabs Eggsy, pulling him into a hard, brief hug.

"You scared the life out of me, lad," he murmurs.

"Sorry." Eggsy says, returning the embrace. Merlin smiles at him and lets go. Then throws his arms around Harry.

"Welcome back," Merlin says.

"Thank you," Harry says softly into Merlin’s shoulder. "Glad to be back."

Peeking out of the pile of papers, Eggsy notices the corner of Lancelot’s itinerary.

"So Roxy gets back tomorrow morning, yeah?"  Eggsy says. Merlin lets go of Harry and does his level best to appear apathetic.

"Ay, she does," he says. And Eggsy doesn’t know why Merlin even _tries_ to lie to him any more. They spent days cooped up together in Merlin’s apartment after V-day, and months after that practically living in each other’s brains while they set world to rights.

"Awesome," says Eggsy. He winks. Merlin turns pink.

Eggsy and Harry walk in silence all the way to the drive, where a car and a driver wait for them. As he climbs inside, Eggsy suddenly remembers that the place he’s been calling "home" for the past few months is actually Harry’s home. And really, what with Harry being not dead and his name still being on the deed, _technically_ Eggsy has no claim to the house whatsoever.

Not that he wants a claim necessarily. Harry has been living out of cheap hotels and god knows what other worse places for half a year, he’ll be wanting his own room and his own bed and Eggsy sure as hell isn’t about to stand in the way of that. But Eggsy body is aching. And his heart is aching, and he very badly wants to be at home too.

Mum’s would have to do.

"If it’s no bother, I should run into yours and grab a few things to take with me to mums." Eggsy says, looking at his knees. He can feel his face turning red.

Harry already knows where Eggsy has been living, but somehow, now that they’re back in London, it seems like a much bigger deal than it had while they were barreling head first through dark and danger.

"Don’t be ridiculous, Eggsy," Harry says. "Stay the night, at least. I can use the guest room—"

"Harry," Eggsy looks up, horrified, "you ain’t sleeping in a guest room in your own house. _I’ll_ use the guest room."

Harry gives him a little smile.

"Well alright, if you insist. I confess, I have missed my bed."

Eggsy snorts.

"I can only imagine."

The driver drops them at Harry’s door and Eggsy unlocks it. For a minute the two of them just stand in the hallway, looking at the house together. Harry, holding one hand against the wall and taking in every tiny detail. Eggsy, just looking around to pretend he’s not actually looking at Harry.

An expression of soft happiness is crinkling to the surface of Harry’s face. Eggsy’s chest hurts in way that goes much deeper than his bruises.

He is so gone for this man.

"Chinese" Eggsy says to Harry. "Then showers and a real bed for you, yeah? C’mon."  He walks into the kitchen.

Harry follows, giving him a look filled with fondness.

"Is your un-quellable instinct to care for everyone all the time my fault do you think?" he asks lightly.

Eggsy has no idea what that means let alone how to answer it.

Harry laughs and shakes his head, pulls a chair out from the table. "Sit," he says, "I’ll order the Chinese." Eggsy sits. Harry calls up the closest Chinese restaurant and orders what sounds like half the menu. Then he puts a glass of water down in front of Eggsy and sits across the table with his own.

Eggsy sips the shitty London tap water like it’s wine. Fuck, he’s glad to be home.

"I told you to take care of your mother," Harry belatedly explains, "after I delivered the news about your father."

"Oh," says Eggsy. "Everybody were tellin’ me stuff like that back then. I think I’m just maternal by nature." He grins. Harry rewards him with a chuckle.

The Chinese arrives and together they eat an alarming amount of it. It’s getting late by then, so they take turns in the shower. When Eggsy emerges, steam-warmed and blissful, he finds a pair of his pajama pants and a t-shirt folded on the guest bed. Along with the book he’d been reading and the pillow of Harry’s he’d been using. A tight knot blooms in his chest. It’s a small gesture, but little acts of kindness have always felt huge to Eggsy.

This is one of the things that made him fall stupid in love with Harry from the beginning. The way Harry has always been able to let Eggsy know he’s safe without making Eggsy feel like a coward for being so afraid all the time.

There are other reasons too. Better ones, to Eggsy’s mind. Like how Harry is the kind of guy who’s constantly trying to balance out the scales of a fucked up world even though he just keeps getting kicked in the nuts for it. How Harry is _always late_ no matter where he’s going and never bothers to apologize.

How Harry is actually and truly, an utter badass, but also the kind of guy who named his dog Mr. Pickle, and collects fucking butterflies, and is just in general, completely and unapologetically weird; an utter non-conformist in his uniquely gentlemanly way.

Eggsy dresses for bed, struggling back into his sling, and crawls under the covers. He turns out the lamp at the bedside. The painkillers caught up with him a while ago and the discomfort in his shoulder is a distant frustration. He can hear the floor down the hallway squeaking with Harry’s footsteps as he moves around, doing whatever it is that Harry Hart does right before bed.

Eggsy falls asleep listening to the familiar sounds of the ghost he knows so well.

#

_Eggsy is sitting at Harry’s desk in Harry’s study and watching through the laptop screen as Harry dies._

_The black barrel of Valentine’s gun is like a needle mark into the skin of the world. Tiny, deep, and fatal. Blood explodes everywhere and Harry’s glasses clatter to the pavement. They land in one, unfractured piece, facing Harry, who is ashen white and trapped in his last expression. A red-black hole oozes from the center of his forehead. His eyes are already glassed over, lips still._

_He doesn’t choke. He’s dead before he can even comprehend his own destruction._

_His empty brown eyes are looking right at Eggsy, and Eggsy is frozen, holding on to the edge of the desk with trembling hands._

_He wants to look away. He feels sick and cold and terrified. But he knows that after this, he’ll never see Harry’s face again._

_So he just sits, chest heaving, trying to breath for Harry, trying to take those last, desperate gasps that Harry can’t take…_

Eggsy wakes, still gasping. Tears streaming down his face. His pillow is damp under his cheek. He sits up, hands shaking, and tries to orient himself, to puzzle out the unfamiliar contours of this strange room he finds himself in.

The guest room. He’s in Harry's guest room. Because Harry is in _his_ room. Alive. Jesus, _fuck,_ Harry’s alive.

Eggsy flops back against his pillow.

"Harry’s alive. Harry’s alive. Harry’s alive."

When the shaking stops and the iron grip of the nightmare fades, Eggsy sighs and heaves himself out of bed. It’s three a.m. but there’s no way in hell he’s falling back to sleep after that _._ He’s not sure he ever wants to sleep again because for the first time in six months Harry is alive in real life and dead in Eggsy’s dreams.

Eggsy pads down to the kitchen in his bare feet, thinking vaguely about some tea and more Chinese. He’s careful to be silent so he won’t wake Harry.

At the bottom of the stairs he finds there was no reason for his stealth. The kitchen light is on and Harry is there, bustling around in his bare feet. He has two teacups set aside next to a box of PG Tips. and the electric kettle going. There’s also a white and blue porcelain teapot that looks like the kind of thing tea might be served out of if, say, one went to tea with the Queen.

Eggsy feels a smile stretching across his face, the final dark chills of his nightmare sliding off his shoulders like an old blanket. He leans against the doorframe and watches Harry boil water.

Harry Hart, assassin, reaches up and pulls two blue, butterfly saucers down from the cupboard.

 _Freak,_ Eggsy thinks happily.

The small bubbling of the kettle rises to a light roar. As Harry turns to reach for it, his elbow bumps the china teapot and it slips, teeters, and smashes to the floor.

" _Oh_ —sweet Mary queen of _fuck_ ," Harry spits.

Eggsy bursts into helpless laughter.

Harry looks up then and sees him.

"Eggsy," he says in surprise. A sheepish grin wakes on his face. "Ah—"

Eggsy laughs harder. He clutches the doorframe to keep himself upright and laughs his soul up into the roof of his mouth and then keeps laughing. He laughs out his joy at seeing Harry, clattering around at three in the morning and smashing teapots, just like any other blundering human alive. He laughs out his relief at seeing Harry standing, warm and a little embarrassed in the middle of his own kitchen, instead of lying cold in a coffin, or dry in scattered ashes. He laughs until he thinks his stomach is going to come out his nose.

Eggsy laughs until the laughing starts to kill him, because he can’t breathe, and then he finally gasps long draughts of air and hides his eyes against the back of his hand, catching his breath. Composing himself slowly through intermittent fits of giggles.

"I suppose, given the events of the past few days, I can’t blame you for being a little bit hysterical," Harry says warmly. He steps over the poor, busted corpse of his beautiful teapot and makes a vague gesture at the counter. "I couldn’t sleep. And I heard you wake up a few minutes ago, so thought I’d make us some tea."

Eggsy isn’t the least bit ashamed that Harry heard the nightmare. Harry knows worse and more compromising things about Eggsy than that. But knowing that Harry came down here in the middle of the night to make tea just because Eggsy had a nightmare…it bends Eggsy’s sanity a little. In the best possible way.  

Because he can’t think of another way to express all the things he’s feeling right now, Eggsy crosses the room, throws his good arm around Harry’s neck and strangles him into a hug. He buries his face in Harry’s warm shoulder.

"I’m really fucking glad you ain’t dead," he says.

Harry wraps his arms tight around Eggsy and rests his cheek against the top of Eggsy’s head.

"Oh my boy," whispers Harry and Eggsy can feel Harry’s breath in his hair. He just holds on and soaks up the sensations of Harry, solid and real and holding Eggsy in his arms like there might not be a tomorrow. Eggsy closes his eyes and tries to banish the figments of Harry he’s known for the last six months, brush all the shades and phantasms away from where they cling like cobwebs. "What were you thinking," Harry asks softly, "letting an old fool like me break your heart?"

"Weren't a choice," Eggsy whispers.

Harry moves his head down, turns his face so his nose brushes against Eggsy’s temple.

"All those idiotic things I said to you before Kentucky," Harry says, "all that time I allowed to pass afterwards, knowing you believed those had been my last words to you...I _never_ should have—Eggsy, I’ve loved you from the beginning, you must know that." Harry brushes a gentle kiss against Eggsy’s temple. "Please, _please_ know that."

Eggsy’s heart, which had been starting to slow down and unclench at last, tries to flap it’s way out of his chest.

"Knew you didn’t mean them things you said in the loo," Eggsy says, voice wobbling. "For a professional killer you’re pretty bad at keep’n your heart outta your eyes."

Harry laughs. A breathless noise that that sends pleasant shivers down Eggsy’s spine.

"Thank god, then," Harry whispers. He drops another slow kiss further down on Eggsy’s cheek. "Eggsy…"

Eggsy turns his head and meets Harry’s mouth.

Harry’s relieved exhale falls on Eggsy’s face like a fucking summer breeze. His hand sweeps around to cup Eggsy’s jaw like it’s something precious, fragile as that goddamn teapot. Harry kisses him soft and sweet and Eggsy feels like he's separating slowly into a million pieces. He wants to laugh again. It’s coming up from the soles of his feet, lighting fires as it goes. Eggsy rocks up on his toes, threading his fingers into Harry’s hair and sucks Harry’s bottom lip into his mouth. He has no intent, he’s just exploring, finding all the dark corners Harry keeps hidden away from everyone else.

A small sound escapes Harry’s throat and he wraps his arm around Eggsy’s waist. For Eggsy it’s like learning he can play an instrument he’s never held before, finding that he can make Harry go weak at the knees.

"Eggsy," Harry says against Eggsy’s lips. Eggsy smiles and kisses him again, pulls that gentlemanly reserve down into the messy whirlpool of his own desire. Eggsy doesn’t want the gentleman, he wants _Harry._ He wants Harry to want _him._ He licks his way into Harry’s mouth and goes looking for the place where Harry’s manners live so he can eat them alive and find out what lives underneath.

Harry runs his hand lower to Eggsy’s hip, pulling them flush together. He scrapes his teeth over Eggsy’s lip, tips a small smile against his mouth and then gives Eggsy exactly what he’s asking for.

Eggsy suddenly finds himself back against the door jam, Harry’s fingers in his hair, pulling his head back. Harry sucks a bruise into the atlas of bruises that is already Eggsy’s skin. Eggsy makes a helpless noise and clings to Harry’s bicep while Harry’s teeth and a tongue map a new, dark blue country below his jaw.

" _Shit,_ Harry," he groans.

Harry lays another small kiss into Eggsy’s throat and lifts his head.

"Come to bed with me," he breathes.

"Yes. _Yes._ Fuck yes," Eggsy babbles. Harry smiles and draws away so Eggsy can step out from the wall. Eggsy takes his chance to just look.

Harry, standing in the soft light of the kitchen, with his lips kissed red and his pajamas askew, hair hurricaned by sleeplessness, is beautiful. His chest rising and falling. Looking back at Eggsy like he’s sunrise on the horizon.

Then Harry gives Eggsy an impatient look and gestures with his arm at the stairs.

Right. _Bed._ With Harry.

Eggsy grins and takes the stairs as fast as his aching body will let him. Harry follows, laughing softly. It’s the best sound Eggsy’s ever heard.

The bedroom is dark, lit only by moonlight, making shadows soft. Eggsy tips himself into the bed (he can smell Harry in the sheets again, and seriously his heart is about to fly away and never come back) and rolls over to wait. Harry follows more slowly. At first Eggsy thinks he’s being his usual distinguished self, but when Harry reaches the edge of the bed and looks down, Eggsy sees that he’s actually just shattered. Blown apart from the inside out.

Eggsy knows how he feels. He reaches his arm out and flexes his fingers.

"C'mere," he says softly.

Harry reaches back, fingertips just brushing against Eggsy's. He undoes the buttons of his shirt slowly with his other hand and Eggsy's mouth goes dry as the garment falls away.

Harry's eyes are dark pools swallowing their surroundings, pinning Eggsy down and gobbling up the periphery, whittling reality smaller and smaller until Harry and Eggsy are the only two things left. He crawls onto the mattress, threading his fingers through Eggsy's own and lifting Eggsy's hand to his mouth, branding Eggsy's wrist with open kisses.

Harry says into the flesh of Eggsy’s wrist, almost as if to himself, "Dear boy, you’ve been an inconvenience to me since the moment you walked into the shop."

"Get under your skin, do I?" Eggsy asks, grinning wide.

"You do. Now hush please, I’m trying to tell you something." Eggsy obediently shuts his mouth. Harry moves to sit at Eggsy’s side, looking down at Eggsy and crossing his legs underneath him. "Eggsy, I find you devastating. If you ever took it into your head to hurt me, you could easily tear me down at my basest foundations..."

"Harry, I’d _never_ \--"

"I am...rather pathetically in love with you." Harry interrupts.

"You said that already," says Eggsy.

"I did. But now I’m asking for an answer."

Eggsy is utterly flummoxed. First, he’s still floored by the idea of Harry Hart loving him so much that he would feel the need to ask if Eggsy loves him back simply out of self preservation. Second that there could be _any question in Harry’s mind at all_ about how Eggsy feels.

"Harry," he says, voice nearly deserting him. He forces the words out. "Not ta keep bangin' on about a sore subject, but you already took me apart six months ago. An’ if look like I— _how does I look,_ Harry?" he asks hoarsely.

"Quite dismantled," Harry answers, mouth tipping up at the corner. He leans forward, apparently satisfied, but Eggsy stops him because he hasn’t said the words yet and he needs to. He’s always been awful at this part, and it’s cost him more than one messy break-up, but he’s never meant it before. Not like this.

"I love you, Harry," he says. "I fuckin’ swear I do."

Harry smiles at him.

"I believe you, Eggsy."

Harry closes the space between them. He kisses Eggsy, deep and unhurried, like the long, slow drag of dawn. He traces Eggsy’s cheekbones with his thumbs. And, rather than putting Eggsy back together, he sets out to finish the job he’s already begun. Steadily, with every touch, pulling out the final pins and nails that keep Eggsy from shambling to pieces.

Eggsy gasps. Shivers. And gladly lets go.

Harry’s tongue slips into his mouth, questing. Then he kisses Eggsy’s throat. Eggsy tries to anchor himself, he wants to reach up with both arms and wrap them around Harry. But the sling makes it impossible. He pulls against it anyway, frustrated. Pain lances through his shoulder.

 _"Ow,_ shit," he hisses.

Harry picks his head up and looks at Eggsy. Brown eyes roving from the bruise on Eggsy’s face to the sling.

"Eggsy," he says gently, "we can wait."

"Fuck that," says Eggsy. "No way. I ain’t dead. And you ain’t dead. And this is how we’re celebratin’."

Harry laughs.

"Lie still then," he says, pushing his hands up under Eggsy’s shirt. Light kisses like raindrops fall onto Eggsy’s chest and stomach. Harry takes his time, pausing to lap at the circular bruise in the middle of Eggsy’s sternum, and then sliding to the floor on his knees.

"Harry," Eggsy tries to say, but his voice catches in his throat and it’s barely even a whisper. Harry shushes him with a tender sound. His thumbs hook under the waistband of Eggsy’s flannel pajamas and boxers and drag them down.

Eggsy sucks in a breath and tries his damnedest not to tremble; fails utterly. He’s hard as a fucking rock but underneath that he’s got nothing but cobwebs holding him together.

"Harry," he rasps again.

Harry kisses his hips, lush and careful.

"Eggsy, dear," he answers. He wraps his hand around Eggsy’s erection, swirls his tongue around the head and then plunges Eggsy into dark and heat and warmth.

It’s exactly the opposite of everything Eggsy has been terrified of for _months._ The cold empty bed in a big, mahogany room. Wide polished desk and an unfinished wall of headlines.

Harry clearly knows what he’s doing. His hand picks up the steady rhythm of his mouth, thumb brushing the divot of Eggsy’s hip in a way that speaks of mindful care and love. Eggsy has never had a blowjob like this in his life, one that feels like plummeting and rising all at the same time.

He doesn’t hear his own sounds, mind too focused on Harry and his mouth and his hands, but Harry’s small moans of encouragement keep Eggsy company in the roar of his sudden, unexpected dissolution.

Eggsy’s hand clutches the sheet and he tips his head back, breath coming and going like storm winds. It’s too much--having Harry back, knowing Harry loves him, after weeks and months and lifetimes of trying to make peace with a ghost--it’s too much for him to last. The tension thrums through his body, strung across a taut wire of pleasure.

There’s a litany of promises and vulgar words gathered on the tip of Eggsy’s tongue, but he hasn’t got the breath to spit them out.

The wire snaps. Eggsy cries out, back arching, legs quaking. He tumbles down around Harry, groaning and gasping. His consciousness trickles down like water into the bottom of the night where the cowards and the victims live.  

His heart beats. He takes a breath.

Eggsy opens his eyes and sees the moon in the window and shadows on the ceiling. He looks down, over the battlefield of his body, and sees Harry, still kneeling, smiling full and happy up at him.

"Ah, Eggsy," Harry says, nuzzling into Eggsy’s hip and kissing the taut skin. "You are a beautiful creature."

Eggsy grabs at him, pulling. "Up," he demands. Harry lets himself be guided, crawling over Eggsy's body until his knees straddle either side of Eggsy's chest. Eggsy grabs a pillow and stuffs it under his head to put him at a better angle, determined to do his part before fatigue swallows him and makes him useless.

"What are you plotting, hm?" Harry asks, playfully.

Eggsy winks, grabs a handful of Harry’s rear with his good hand, and slides himself lower on the bed, mouthing at a damp spot into the front of Harry’s pajamas where the weight of his erection rests.  

" _Ah,_ " Harry gasps. "Give an old man some warning."

Eggsy grins, licks along the damp cotton, and then sweeps his hand around, pushing the fabric down and out of his way. Harry’s legs tremble at his touch. Eggsy licks him, drags his teeth lightly over the sensitive flesh. His left arm is trapped against Harry’s thigh and making his shoulder twinge. He wiggles lower to give it room. The motion doesn’t go unnoticed.

"Eggsy" Harry shudders out, "you’re under no obligation to return the gesture. This is not something to exacerbate your injuries over."

Eggsy lets his head fall back to the pillow for a moment. He doesn’t know when the last time Harry took someone to bed was, but he’s willing to bet it was more than six months ago. Yet here Harry is, a quivering wreck above him and still worrying about Eggsy’s bloody well-being.

He shakes his head.

"You are mental," he mumbles. But, when he goes back to finish the job, he takes it slower. Lavishing Harry’s hips, his legs, whatever he can reach with kisses. Love is a two way street, and maybe Eggsy is no gentleman, but he knows about reciprocation. And he knows this night isn’t over until they’re both lying side by side in pieces.

He swallows down around Harry, tips him forward further with a gentle push at the small of his back. Harry grabs the headboard with one hand and braces himself against the mattress with the other.

"Eggsy," he whispers, while Eggsy sucks him careful and slow. Enough to bring him close, toes right up to the edge, but without the momentum to push him over. Eggsy waits, working at Harry with patience, listening to every sound that Harry makes.

He hears the moment that Harry finally forgets himself, stops thinking about anything but his body. His shoulders shake and he drips little moans and words between uncontrolled gasps. He sounds honest and vulnerable and Eggsy loves him for it.

Eggsy wraps his hand around Harry and picks up the pace. Harry tenses and inhales sharply through his nose, swears like sailor under his breath.

"Eggsy," he moans and comes. Eggsy swallows it down, they’ll be too tired to deal with the mess otherwise, and licks Harry clean with a few, gentle swipes of his tongue.

Harry takes a deep breath and slides down to lie beside Eggsy, looking shattered.

"You are remarkably eloquent at times," he says. Eggsy laughs while Harry sets them both to rights. Then they fumble under the covers together. Downstairs, Eggsy hears the chimes of the grandfather clock and the creaking of old floorboards.

The moon is gone. It’s five in the morning.

Eggsy lays his head on Harry’s shoulder. He feels the hazy edges of real sleeping sneaking up on him.

"Perhaps this is old fashioned," Harry says suddenly. "But you can stay. I'd like you to stay."

"The night?" Eggsy asks. "Technically, I think I done that already."

"Not the night—I mean yes, the night too—but, if you wanted…" Harry sighs and traces the edge of Eggsy’s face with his fingers, brushes along the border of Eggsy’s black eye. "Will you stay?" Harry asks, and Eggsy knows that as much as Harry keeps trying to sit him down and make him tea and make bloody well sure that Eggsy understands he’s cared for, Harry is just as terrified of the silence as Eggsy is. Maybe more. Eggsy punched and kicked his way out of that corner years ago, Dean took a swing, he ducked, and there was the open door, but Harry still has one foot in the shadows. He’s been home for less than twenty-four hours and alone for six months, and he must feel like at any second he’ll be asked to go back. Be no one again. We need a ghost, Harry, and you’re the only dead man we know.

"Course I will, Harry," Eggsy whispers. "And good luck gettin’ rid a’me later."

"Darling, Eggsy." Harry murmurs. "I'd be mad to ever let you go."

The sun is starting to come up as they creep towards unconsciousness. It slides across the floor and up the edge of the bed like slow, heady silk. And it falls across their bodies and their faces, and really, Eggsy thinks, they should get up and close the fucking curtains, but he can’t be bothered and Harry is already asleep.

As the sky gets brighter, so do they. Harry’s skin glows in the dawn and Eggsy traces his fingers across it, feeling warm and drowsy. He turns his face into the hollow of Harry’s jaw to hide from the light.

Instead of fading, evaporating like spectres into the dawn, they lie together, heavy and real as stones, and wait for the sun to discover them.

 

 


End file.
